PONSONBY - Falsehood In War-time 1928

by ARTHUR
PONSONBY
M.P.

(LORD PONSONBY)

amazing
collection of care-
fully documented
lies circulated in Great
Britain, France, Ger-
many, Italy, and America
during the Great War.

Tenth Im Pression

FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd

THE CRANK

CASUAL OBSERVATIONS
CONFLICT OF OPINION
NOW IS THE TIME
LIFE HERE AND NOW

HINTS ON PLATFORM AND PARLIAMENTARY
SPEAKING

With Dorothea Ponsonby
REBELS AND REFORMERS

BRITISH DIARISTS (Benn)

DEMOCRACY AND DIPLOMACY (Methuen)

MORE ENGLISH DIARIES (Methuen)

ENGLISH DIARIES (Methuen)

DISARMAMENT (Hogarth)

PEPYS (ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS) (Macmillan)

PRIORY AND MANOR OF LYNCHMERE AND
SHULBREDE (Barnicott)

QUEEN VICTORIA (Duckworth)

SCOTTISH AND IRISH DIARIES (Methuen)

JOHN EVELYN (Heinemann)

FALSEHOOD IN
WAR-TIME

CONTAINING AN ASSORTMENT OF LIES CIRCULATED
THROUGHOUT THE NATIONS DURING
THE GREAT WAR

BY

ARTHUR PONSONBY

(LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE)

LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
MUSEUM STREET

FIRST PUBLISHED MAY 1928
SECOND IMPRESSION JULY 1928
THIRD IMPRESSION (SECOND EDITION) AUGUST 1928

FOURTH IMPRESSION NOVEMBER 1928

FIFTH IMPRESSION MARCH 1929

SIXTH IMPRESSION JANUARY 1930
SEVENTH IMPRESSION NOVEMBER 1936
EIGHTH IMPRESSION JANUARY 1940
NINTH IMPRESSION FEBRUARY 1940

TENTH IMPRESSION JUNE 1940

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
KIMBLE & BRADFORD, LONDON, W.I

PREFACE

In compiling and collecting material for this volume, I
am indebted to Lord Tavistock for his sympathetic
help and useful suggestions. Professor Salvemini,
Mr. Francis Nielson, Mr. T. Dixon, Mrs. C. R. Buxton,
Mrs. Urie, Miss Durham, and Mrs. Wallis have also
assisted me with contributions and in making investiga-
tions. My thanks are due to various correspondents
who have furnished me with material. I am specially
grateful to Miss Margaret Digby for her research

work and for the revision of the proofs.

A, P.

I,
II.
III.

IV.

VIII.

IX,

xI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI,
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.

XXI.

CONTENTS

PREFACR < « « «
INTRODUCTION . . . . . .
THE COMMITMENT TO FRANCE f. Te is
SERBIA AND THE MURDER OF THE ARCHDUKE
INVASION OF BELGIUM AS CAUSE OF WAR...
GERMANY’S SOLE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR
PASSAGE OF RUSSIAN TROOPS THROUGH GREAT
BRITAIN «og lH CU ‘
THE MUTILATED NURSE .
THE CRIMINAL KAISER . ..
THE BELGIAN BABY WITHOUT HANDS
THE LOUVAIN ALTAR-PIECE . .
THE CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY .
DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES ...
THE BABY OF COURBECK LOO .
THE CRUCIFIED CANADIAN... _..
THE SHOOTING OF THE FRANZOSLING .
LITTLE ALF’S STAMP COLLECTION
THE TATTOOED MAN. ..
THE CORPSE FACTORY Ku? Tae. %
THE BISHOP OF ZANZIBAR’S LETTER
THE GERMAN U-BOAT OUTRAGE.
CONSTANTINOPLE i ee Se GS
THE ““TUSITANIA”” 6 4 &% «@ %

PAGE

13
+3
43
50

57

63
67
7!
78
83
84
88
go
gI
94
97
99
102
114
116

119
121

10 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

PAGE

XXII. REPORT OF A BROKEN-UP MEETING ‘ > 226
XXIII. ATROCITY STORIES ‘ , ‘ ; z . 128
XXIV. FAKED PHOTOGRAPHS ; , ‘ ‘ - as
XXV. THE DOCTORING OF OFFICIAL PAPERS . . 140
XXVI. HYPOCRITICAL INDIGNATION . ; ; . 146
XXVII. OTHER LIES j ‘ ; : ‘ ‘ ~” E88
XXVIII. THE MANUFACTURE OF NEWS . ; j . 61
XXIX. WAR AIMS . ‘ ; , ; ; ‘ . 162

XXX. FOREIGN LIES—

A)-GERMANY. 5 «8 OUGlUOUHlCUS

(4) 67
(B) BRANCH. cf a « ¢ & ¥ & -296
(C) THE UNITED STATES ir. ete eo”. Oy ESB

(D) ITALY oe. ke Se oe ee a ERO

**A lie never lives to be old.”
SOPHOCLES.

“When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.”

“Kommt der Krieg ins Land
Gibt Liigen wie Sand.”

** You will find wars are supported by a class of argument
which, after the war is over, the people find were arguments
they should never have listened to.”

Joun BriGur.

“In the arena of international rivalry and conflict men
have placed patriotism above truthfulness as the indispensable
virtue of statesmen.”

STANLEY BALDWIN.

“It is easier to make money by lies than by truth. Truth
has only one power, it can kindle souls. But, after all, a
soul is a greater force than a crowd.”

G. Lowes DICKINSON.

“And when war did come we told youth, who had to
get us out of it, tall tales of what it really is and of the clover-
beds to which it leads.”

J. M. Barrie.

FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

INTRODUCTION

THE object of this volume is not to cast fresh blame on
authorities and individuals, nor is it to expose one
nation more than another to accusations of deceit.

Falsehood is a recognized and extremely useful
weapon in warfare, and every country uses it quite
deliberately to deceive its own people, to attract neutrals,
and to mislead the enemy. The ignorant and innocent
masses in each country are unaware at the time that
they are being misled, and when it is all over only
here and there are the falsehoods discovered and
exposed. As it is all past history and the desired effect
has been produced by the stories and statements, no one
troubles to investigate the facts and establish the truth.

Lying, as we all know, does not take place only in
war-time. Man, it has been said, is not “‘a veridical
animal,” but his habit of lying is not nearly so extra-
ordinary as his amazing readiness to believe. It is,
indeed, because of human credulity that lies flourish.
But in war-time the authoritative organization of lying
is not sufficiently recognized. The deception of whole
peoples is not a matter which can be lightly regarded.

A useful purpose can therefore be served in the
interval of so-called peace by a warning which people
can examine with dispassionate calm, that the authorities
in each country do, and indeed must, resort to this
practice in order, first, to justify themselves by depicting

14 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

the enemy as an undiluted criminal; and secondly, to
inflame popular passion sufficiently to secure recruits for
the continuance of the struggle. They cannot afford to
tell the truth. In some cases it must be admitted that
at the moment they do not know what the truth is.

The psychological factor in war is just as important
as the military factor. The morale of civilians, as well
as of soldiers, must be kept up tothe mark. The War
Offices, Admiralties, and Air Ministries look after the
military side. Departments have to be created to see
to the psychological side. People must never be
allowed to become despondent; so victories must be
exaggerated and defeats, if not concealed, at any rate
minimized, and the stimulus of indignation, horror,
and hatred must be assiduously and continuously
pumped into the public mind by means of “ propa-
ganda.” As Mr. Bonar Law said in an interview to
the United Press of America, referring to patriotism,
“It is well to have it properly stirred by German
frightfulness”’?; and a sort of general confirmation of
atrocities is given by vague phrases which avoid responsi-
bility for the authenticity of any particular story, as
when Mr. Asquith said (House of Commons, April 27,
1915): ‘“‘ We shall not forget this horrible record of
calculated cruelty and crime.”

The use of the weapon of falsehood is more necessary
in a country where military conscription is not the law
of the land than in countries where the manhood of
the nation is automatically drafted into the Army, Navy,
or Air Service. The public can be worked up emo-
tionally by sham ideals. A sort of collective hysteria
spreads and rises until finally it gets the better of sober
people and reputable newspapers.

With a warning before them, the common people

INTRODUCTION 15

may be more on their guard when the war cloud next
appears on the horizon and less disposed to accept as
truth the rumours, explanations, and pronouncements
issued for their consumption. They should realize
that a Government which has decided on embarking
on the hazardous and terrible enterprise of war must at
the outset present a one-sided case in justification of
its action, and cannot afford to admit in any particular
whatever the smallest degree of right or reason on the
part of the people it has made up its mind to fight.
Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances con-
cealed, and a picture presented which by its crude
colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their
Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and
that the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been
proved beyond question. A moment’s reflection would
tell any reasonable person that such obvious bias cannot
possibly represent the truth. But the moment’s reflec-
tion is not allowed; lies are circulated with great
rapidity. The unthinking mass accept them and by
their excitement sway the rest. The amount of rubbish
and humbug that pass under the name of patriotism in
war-time in all countries is sufficient to make decent
people blush when they are subsequently disillusioned.

At the outset the solemn asseverations of monarchs
and leading statesmen in each nation that they did not
want war must be placed on a par with the declarations
of men who pour paraffin about a house knowing they
are continually striking matches and yet assert they do
not want a conflagration. This form of self-deception,
which involves the deception of others, is fundamentally
dishonest.

War being established as a recognized institution to
be resorted to when Governments quarrel, the people

16 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

are more or less prepared. They quite willingly delude
themselves in order to justify their own actions. They
are anxious to find an excuse for displaying their
patriotism, or they are disposed to seize the opportunity
for the excitement and new life of adventure which
war opens out to them. So there is a sort of national
wink, everyone goes forward, and the individual, in
his turn, takes up lying as a patriotic duty. In the low
standard of morality which prevails in war-time, such
a practice appears almost innocent. His efforts are
sometimes a little crude, but he does his best to follow
the example set. Agents are employed by authority
and encouraged in so-called propaganda work. The
type which came prominently to the front in the broad-
casting of falsehood at recruiting meetings is now well
known. The fate which overtook at least one of the
most popular of them in this country exemplifies the
depth of degradation to which public opinion sinks in a
war atmosphere.

With eavesdroppers, letter-openers, decipherers, tele-
phone tappers, spies, an intercept department, a forgery
department, a criminal investigation department, a pro-
paganda department, an intelligence department, a
censorship department, a ministry of information, a
Press bureau, etc., the various Governments were well
equipped to “‘ instruct ” their peoples.

The British official propaganda department at Crewe
House, under Lord Northcliffe, was highly successful.
Their methods, more especially the raining down of
millions of leaflets on to the German Army, far sur-
passed anything undertaken by the enemy. In The
Secrets of Crewe House,t the methods are described for
our satisfaction and approval. The declaration that

* The Secrets of Crewe House, Sit Campbell Stuart, K.B.E.

INTRODUCTION 17

>

only ‘‘ truthful statements ” were used is repeated just
too often, and does not quite tally with the description
of the faked letters (page 99) and bogus titles and book-
covers (page 104), of which use was made. But, of
course, we know that such clever propagandists are
equally clever in dealing with us after the event as in
dealing with the enemy at the time. In the apparently
candid description of their activities we know we are
hearing only part of the story. The circulators of base
metal know how to use the right amount of alloy for us
as well as for the enemy.

In the many tributes to the success of our propaganda
from German Generals and the German Press, there is
no evidence that our statements were always strictly
truthful. To quote one: General von Hutier, of the
Sixth German Army, sent a message (page 115), in
which the following passage occurs :

The method of Northcliffe at the Front is to distribute
through airmen a constantly increasing number of leaflets
and pamphlets ; the letters of German prisoners are falsified
in the most outrageous way; tracts and pamphlets are
concocted, to which the names of German poets, writers,
and statesmen are forged, or which present the appearance
of having been printed in Germany, and bear, for example,
the title of the Reclam series, when they really come from
the Northcliffe press, which is working day and night for
this same purpose. His thought and aim are that these
forgeries, however obvious they may appear to the man
who thinks twice, may suggest a doubt, even for a moment,
in the minds of those who do not think for themselves,
and that their confidence in their leaders, in their own
strength, and in the inexhaustible resources of Germany
may be shattered.

The propaganda, to begin with, was founded on the
shifting sand of the myth of Germany’s so/e responsi-
B

18 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

bility.t Later it became slightly confused owing to the
inability of our statesmen to declare what our aims
were, and towards the end it was fortified by descrip-
tions of the magnificent, just, and righteous peace
which was going to be “established on lasting founda-
tions.”” This unfortunately proved to be the greatest
falsehood of all.

In calm retrospect we can appreciate better the dis-
astrous effects of the poison of falsehood, whether
officially, semi-officially, or privately manufactured. It
has been rightly said that the injection of the poison of
hatred into men’s minds by means of falsehood is a
greater evil in war-time than the actual loss of life.
The defilement of the human soul is worse than the
destruction of the human body. A fuller realization of
this is essential.

Another effect of the continual appearance of false
and biased statement and the absorption of the lie
atmosphere is that deeds of real valour, heroism, and
physical endurance and genuine cases of inevitable
torture and suffering are contaminated and desecrated ;
the wonderful comradeship of the battlefield becomes
almost polluted. Lying tongues cannot speak of
deeds of sacrifice to show their beauty or value. So it
is that the praise bestowed on heroism by Government
and Press always jars, more especially when, as is
generally the case with the latter, it is accompanied by
cheap and vulgar sentimentality. That is why one
instinctively wishes the real heroes to remain unre-
cognized, so that their record may not be smirched by
cynical tongues and pens so well versed in falsehood.

When war reaches such dimensions as to involve
the whole nation, and when the people at its conclusion

™ See page 57.

INTRODUCTION 19

find they have gained nothing but only observe wide-
spread calamity around them, they are inclined to become
more sceptical and desire to investigate the foundations
of the arguments which inspired their patriotism,
inflamed their passions, and prepared them to offer the
supreme sacrifice. They are curious to know why the
ostensible objects for which they fought have none of
them been attained, more especially if they are the
victors. They are inclined to believe, with Lord
Fisher, that “‘ The nation was fooled into the war”
(‘* London Magazine,” January 1920). They begin to
wonder whether it does not rest with them to make one
saying true of which they heard so much, that it was “a
war to end war.”

When the generation that has known war is still
alive, it is well that they should be given chapter and
verse with regard to some of the best-known cries,
catchwords, and exhortations by which they were so
greatly influenced. As a warning, therefore, this col-
lection is made. It constitutes only the exposure of a
few samples. To cover the whole ground would be
impossible. There must have been more deliberate
lying in the world from 1914 to 1918 than in any other
period of the world’s history.

There are several different sorts of disguises which
falsehood can take. There is the deliberate official lie,
issued either to delude the people at home or to mislead
the enemy abroad; of this, several instances are given.
As a Frenchman has said: ‘“‘Tant que les peuples
seront armés, les uns contre les autres, ils auront des
hommes d’état menteurs, comme ils auront des canons
et des mitrailleuses.” (‘As long as the peoples are
armed against each other, there will be lying statesmen,
just as there will be cannons and machine guns.’’)

20 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

A circular was issued by the War Office inviting
reports on war incidents from officers with regard to
the enemy and stating that strict accuracy was not
essential so long as there was inherent probability.

There is the deliberate lie concocted by an ingenious
mind which may only reach a small circle, but which,
if sufficiently graphic and picturesque, may be caught
up and spread broadcast; and there is the hysterical
hallucination on the part of weak-minded individuals.

There is the lie heard and not denied, although lacking
in evidence, and then repeated or allowed to circulate.

There is the mistranslation, occasionally originating in
a genuine mistake, but more often deliberate. Two
minor instances of this may be given.

The Times (agony column), July 9, 1915:

Jacx F. G.—If you are not in khaki by the 2oth, I shall
cut you dead.—ErnHet M.

The Berlin correspondent of the Cologne Gazette
transmitted this :

If you are not in khaki by the zoth, backe ich dich zu Tode
(I will hack you to death).

During the blockade of Germany, it was suggested
that the diseases from which children suffered had been
called Die englische Krankheit, as a permanent reflection
on English inhumanity. Asa matter of fact, die englische
Krankheit is, and always has been, the common German
name for rickets.

There is the general obsession, started by rumour
and magnified by repetition and elaborated by hysteria,
which at last gains general acceptance.

There is the deliberate forgery which has to be very

INTRODUCTION 21

carefully manufactured but serves its purpose at the
moment, even though it be eventually exposed.

There is the omission of passages from official docu-
ments of which only a few of the many instances are
given ;* and the “correctness ” of words and commas
in parliamentary answers which conceal evasions of the
truth.

There is deliberate exaggeration, such, for instance,
as the reports of the destruction of Louvain: ‘* The
intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the
fifteenth century is now no more than a heap of ashes ”
(Press Bureau, August 29, 1914), “‘ Louvain has ceased to
exist ” (“‘ The Times,’ August 29,1914). Asa matter of
fact, it was estimated that about an eighth of the town
had suffered.

There is the concealment of truth, which has to be
resorted to so as to prevent anything to the credit of
the enemy reaching the public. A war correspondent
who mentioned some chivalrous act that a German had
done to an Englishman during an action received a
rebuking telegram from his employer: ‘“‘ Don’t want to
hear about any good Germans ”’; and Sir Philip Gibbs,
in Realities of War, says: ‘‘ At the close of the day the
Germans acted with chivalry, which I was not allowed
to tell at the time.”

There is the faked photograph (“ the camera cannot
lie”). These were more popular in France than here.
In Vienna an enterprising firm supplied atrocity photo-
graphs with blanks for the headings so that they might
be used for propaganda purposes by either side.

The cinema also played a very important part,
especially in neutral countries, and helped considerably in
turning opinion in America in favour of coming in on

* See page 140, 2 See page 135.

22 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

the side of the Allies. To this day in this country
attempts are made by means of films to keep the
wound raw.

There is the ‘‘ Russian scandal,” the best instance of
which during the war, curiously enough, was the
rumour of the passage of Russian troops through
Britain.t Some trivial and imperfectly understood
statement of fact becomes magnified into enormous
proportions by constant repetition from one person to
another.

Atrocity lies were the most popular of all, especially
in this country and America; no war can be without
them. Slander of the enemy is esteemed a patriotic
duty. An English soldier wrote (“‘ The Times,” Septem-
ber 15, 1914): “‘ The stories in our papers are only
exceptions. There are people like them in every
army.” But at the earliest possible moment stories of
the maltreatment of prisoners have to be circulated
deliberately in order to prevent surrenders. This is
done, of course, on both sides. Whereas naturally each
side tries to treat its prisoners as well as possible so
as to attract others.

The repetition of a single instance of cruelty and its
exaggeration can be distorted into a prevailing habit
on the part of the enemy. Unconsciously each one
passes it on with trimmings and yet tries to persuade
himself that he is speaking the truth.

There are lies emanating from the inherent unreli-
ability and fallibility of human testimony. No two
people can relate the occurrence of a street accident
so as to make the two stories tally. When bias and
emotion are introduced, human testimony becomes quite
valueless. In war-time such testimony is accepted as

1 See page 63.

INTRODUCTION 23

conclusive. The scrappiest and most unreliable evidence
is sufficient—“ the friend of the brother of a man who
was killed,” or, as a German investigator of his own
liars puts it, “somebody who had seen it,” or, “‘an
extremely respectable old woman.”

There is pure romance. Letters of soldiers who
whiled away the days and weeks of intolerable waiting
by writing home sometimes contained thrilling descrip-
tions of engagements and adventures which had never
occurred.

There are evasions, concealments, and half-truths
which are more subtly misleading and gradually become
a governmental habit.

There is official secrecy which must necessarily mislead
public opinion. For instance, a popular English author,
who was perhaps better informed than the majority of
the public, wrote a letter to an American author, which
was reproduced in the Press on May 21, 1918, stating :

There are no Secret Treaties of any kind in which this
country is concerned. It has been publicly and clearly
stated more than once by our Foreign Minister, and apart
from honour it would be political suicide for any British
official to make a false statement of the kind.

Yet a series of Secret Treaties existed. It is only fair
to say that the author, not the Foreign Secretary,
is the liar here. Nevertheless the official pamphlet,
The Truth about the Secret Treaties, compiled by
Mr. McCurdy, was published with a number of
unacknowledged excisions, and both Lord Robert Cecil in
1917 and Mr. Lloyd George in 1918 declared (the
latter to a deputation from the Trade Union Congress)
that our policy was not directed to the disruption
of Austro-Hungary, although they both knew that
under the Secret Treaty concluded with Italy in April

24 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

1915 portions of Austria-Hungary were to be handed
over to Italy and she was to be cut off from the sea.
Secret Treaties naturally involve constant denials of
the truth.

There is sham official indignation depending on
genuine popular indignation which is a form of false-
hood sometimes resorted to in an unguarded moment
and subsequently regretted. The first use of gas by
the Germans and the submarine warfare are good
instances of this."

Contempt for the enemy, if illustrated, can prove to
be an unwise form of falsehood. There was atime when
German soldiers were popularly represented cringing,
with their arms in the air and crying “‘ Kamerad,” until
it occurred to Press and propaganda authorities that
people were asking why, if this was the sort of material
we were fighting against, had we not wiped them off the
field in a few weeks.

There are personal accusations and false charges made
in a prejudiced war atmosphere to discredit persons
who refuse to adopt the orthodox attitude towards war.

There are lying recriminations between one country
and another. For instance, the Germans were accused
of having engineered the Armenian massacres, and they,
on their side, declared the Armenians, stimulated by the
Russians, had killed 150,000 Mohammedans (Germania,
October 9, 1915).

Other varieties of falsehood more subtle and elusive
might be found, but the above pretty well cover the
ground.

A good deal depends on the quality of the lie. You
must have intellectual lies for intellectual people and
crude lies for popular consumption, but if your popular

t See page 146,

INTRODUCTION 25

lies are too blatant and your more intellectual section
are shocked and see through them, they may (and indeed
they did) begin to be suspicious as to whether they
were not being hoodwinked too. Nevertheless, the
inmates of colleges are just as credulous as the inmates of
the slums.

Perhaps nothing did more to impress the public
mind—and this is true in all countries—than the
assistance given in propaganda by intellectuals and
literary notables. They were able to clothe the rough
tissue of falsehood with phrases of literary merit and
passages of eloquence better than the statesmen. Some-
times by expressions of spurious impartiality, at other
times by rhetorical indignation, they could by their
literary skill give this or that lie the stamp of indubitable
authenticity, even without the shadow of a proof, or
incidentally refer to it as an accepted fact. The
Narrowest patriotism could be made to appear noble,
the foulest accusations could be represented as an
indignant outburst of humanitarianism, and the meanest
and most vindictive aims falsely disguised as idealism.
Everything was legitimate which could make the
soldiers go on fighting.

The frantic activity of ecclesiastics in recruiting by
means of war propaganda made so deep an impression
on the public mind that little comment on it is needed
here. The few who courageously stood out became
marked men. The resultant and significant loss of
spiritual influence by the Churches is, in itself, sufficient
evidence of the reaction against the betrayal in time of
stress of the most elementary precepts of Christianity by
those specially entrusted with the moral welfare of the
people.

War is fought in this fog of falsehood, a great deal of

26 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

it undiscovered and accepted as truth. The fog arises
from fear and is fed by panic. Any attempt to doubt or
deny even the most fantastic story has to be condemned
at once as unpatriotic, if not traitorous. This allows a
free field for the rapid spread of lies. If they were
only used to deceive the enemy in the game of war it
would not be worth troubling about. But, as the
purpose of most of them is to fan indignation and
induce the flower of the country’s youth to be ready to
make the supreme sacrifice, it becomes a serious matter.
Exposure, therefore, may be useful, even when the
struggle is over, in order to show up the fraud,
hypocrisy, and humbug on which all war rests, and the
blatant and vulgar devices which have been used for so
long to prevent the poor ignorant people from realizing
the true meaning of war.

It must be admitted that many people were conscious
and willing dupes. But many more were unconscious
and were sincere in their patriotic zeal. Finding now
that elaborately and carefully staged deceptions were
practised on them, they feel a resentment which has
not only served to open their eyes but may induce them
to make their children keep their eyes open when next
the bugle sounds.

Let us attempt a very faint and inadequate analogy
between the conduct of nations and the conduct of
individuals.

Imagine two large country houses containing large
families with friends and relations. When the members
of the family of the one house stay in the other, the
butler is instructed to open all the letters they receive
and send and inform the host of their contents, to listen
at the keyhole, and tap the telephone. When a great
match, say a cricket match, which excites the whole

INTRODUCTION 2F

district, is played between them, those who are not
present are given false reports of the game to make
them think the side they favour is winning, the other
side is accused of cheating and foul play, and scandalous
reports are circulated about the head of the family and
the hideous goings on in the other house.

All this, of course, is very mild, and there would be
no specially dire consequences if people were to behave
in such an inconceivably caddish, low, and underhand
way, except that they would at once be expelled from
decent society.

But between nations, where the consequences are
vital, where the destiny of countries and provinces
hangs in the balance, the lives and fortunes of millions
are affected and civilization itself is menaced, the most
upright men honestly believe that there is no depth of
duplicity to which they may not legitimately stoop.
They have got to do it. The thing cannot go on
without the help of lies.

This is no plea that lies should not be used in war-
time, but a demonstration of how lies must be used
in war-time. If the truth were told from the outset,
there would be no reason and no will for war.

Anyone declaring the truth: ‘‘ Whether you are
right or wrong, whether you win or lose, in no circum-
stances can war help you or your country,” would find
himself in gaol very quickly. In war-time, failure to
lie is negligence, the doubting of a lie a misdemeanour,
the declaration of the truth a crime.

In future wars we have now to look forward to a
new and far more efficient instrument of propaganda—
the Government control of broadcasting. Whereas,
therefore, in the past we have used the word “ broad-
cast ” symbolically as meaning the efforts of the Press

28 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

and individual reporters, in future we must use the
word literally, since falsehood can now be circulated
universally, scientifically, and authoritatively.

Many of the samples given in the assortment are
international, but some are exclusively British, as these
are more easily found and investigated, and, after all,
we are more concerned with our own Government and
Press methods and our own national honour than with
the duplicity of other Governments.

Lies told in other countries are also dealt with in
cases where it has been possible to collect sufficient data.
Without special investigation on the spot, the career of
particular lies cannot be fully set out.

When the people of one country understand how the
people in another country are duped, like themselves, in
war-time, they will be more disposed to sympathize
with them as victims than condemn them as criminals,
because they will understand that their crime only con-
sisted in obedience to the dictates of authority and
acceptance of what their Government and Press repre-
sented to them as the truth.

The period covered is roughly the four years of the
war. ‘The intensity of the lying was mitigated after
1918, although fresh crops came up in connection with
other of our international relations. The mischief done by
the false cry ‘‘ Make Germany pay ” continued after 1918
and led, more especially in France, to high expectations
and consequent indignation when it was found that the
people who raised this slogan knew all the time it was a
fantastic impossibility. Many of the old war lies survived
for several years, and some survive even to this day.

There is nothing sensational in the way of revelations
contained in these pages. All the cases mentioned are
well known to those who were in authority, less

INTRODUCTION 29

well known to those primarily affected, and unknown,
unfortunately, to the millions who fell. Although only
a small part of the vast field of falsehood is covered, it
may suffice to show how the unsuspecting innocence of
the masses in all countries was ruthlessly and systemati-
cally exploited.

There are some who object to war because of its
immorality, there are some who shrink from the
arbitrament of arms because of its increased cruelty and
barbarity; there are a growing number who protest
against this method, at the outset known to be unsuc-
cessful, of attempting to settle international disputes
because of its imbecility and futility. But there is not a
living soul in any country who does not deeply resent
having his passions roused, his indignation inflamed,
his patriotism exploited, and his highest ideals desecrated
by concealment, subterfuge, fraud, falsehood, trickery,
and deliberate lying on the part of those in whom he is
taught to repose confidence and to whom he is enjoined
to pay respect.

None of the heroes prepared for suffering and sacrifice,
none of the common herd ready for service and obedience,
will be inclined to listen to the call of their country
once they discover the polluted sources from whence
that call proceeds and recognize the monstrous finger of
falsehood which beckons them to the battlefield.

THE COMMITMENT TO FRANCE

Our prompt entry into the European War in 1914 was
necessitated by our commitment to France. This
commitment was not known to the people; it was
not known to Parliament; it was not even known to
all the members of the Cabinet. More than this, its
existence was denied. How binding the moral engage-
ment was soon became clear. The fact that it was not
a signed treaty had nothing whatever to do with the
binding nature of an understanding come to as a result
of military and naval conversations conducted over a
number of years. Not only was it referred to as an
** obligation of honour ” (Lord Lansdowne), “‘ A com-
pact’? (Mr. Lloyd George), “‘ An honourable expecta-
tion”? (Sir Eyre Crowe), “the closest negotiations and
arrangements between the two Governments” (Mr.
Austen Chamberlain), but Lord Grey himself has
admitted that had we not gone in on France’s side
(quite apart from the infringement of Belgian neutrality),
he would have resigned. That he should have pre-
tended that we were not “‘ bound ” has been a matter
of amazement to his warmest admirers, that the under-
standing should have been kept secret has been a subject
of sharp criticism from statesmen of all parties. No more
vital point stands out in the whole of pre-war diplomacy,
and the bare recital of the denials, evasions,and subter-
fuges forms a tragic illustration of the low standard of
national honour, where war is concerned, which is

32 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

accepted by statesmen whose personal honour is beyond
reproach.

It will be remembered that the conversations which
involved close consultations between military and naval
staffs began before 1906. The first explicit denial came
in 1911. The subsequent extracts can be given with
little further comment.

Mr. Jowerr asked the Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs if, during his term of office, any undertaking, promise,
or understanding had been given to France that, in certain
eventualities, British troops would be sent to assist the
operations of the French Army.

Mr. McKinnon Woop (Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs) : The answer is in the negative.

House of Commons, March 8, 1911.

Str E. Grey: First of all let me try to put an end to
some of the suspicions with regard to secrecy—suspicions
with which it seems to me some people are torturing them-
selves, and certainly worrying others. We have laid before
the House the Secret Articles of the Agreement with France
of 1904. There are no other secret engagements. The
late Government made that agreement in 1904. They
kept those articles secret, and I think to everybody the
reason will be obvious why they did so. It would have
been invidious to make those articles public. In my opinion
they were entirely justified in keeping those articles secret
because they were not articles which commit this House to
serious obligations. I saw a comment made the other
day, when these articles were published, that if a Govern-
ment would keep little things secret, a fortiori, they would
keep big things secret. That is absolutely untrue. There
may be reasons why a Government should make secret
arrangements of that kind if they are not things of first-
rate importance, if they are subsidiary to matters of great
importance. But that is the very reason why the British
Government should not make secret engagements which
commit Parliament to obligations of war. It would be
foolish to do it. No British Government could embark

THE COMMITMENT TO FRANCE 33

upon a war without public opinion behind it, and such
engagements as there are which really commit Parliament
to anything of the kind are contained in treaties or agree-
ments which have been laid before the House. For our-
selves, we have not made a single secret article of any kind
since we came into office.

House of Commons, November 27, 1911.

The whole of this is a careful and deliberate evasion
of the real point.

Nothing was clearer to everyone in Great Britain
in August 1914 than that our understanding with
France was a “‘secret engagement which committed
Parliament to obligations of war.”

Mr. Winston Churchill, in a memorandum to Sir
E. Grey and the Prime Minister, August 23, 1912,
wrote: “‘ Everyone must feel who knows the facts that
we have the obligations of an alliance without its
advantages and, above all, without its precise defini-
tions”? (The World Crisis, vol. i, p. 115).

In 1912 M. Sazonov, the Russian Foreign Minister,
reported to the Czar :

England promised to support France on land by sending
an expedition of 100,000 to the Belgian border to repel the
invasion of France by the German Army through Belgium,
expected by the French General Staff.

Lorp HuGu Cecit: ... There is a very general belief
that this country is under an obligation, not a treaty obliga-
tion, but an obligation arising owing to an assurance given
by the Ministry in the course of diplomatic negotiations, to
send a very large force out of this country to operate in
Europe.

Mr. AsquitH: I ought to say that it is not true.

House of Commons, March 10, 1913.

Sir Wituram By es asked the Prime Minister, whether
c

34 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

he will say if this country is under any, and if so, what,
obligation to France to send an armed force in certain con-
tingencies to operate in Europe; and if so, what are the
limits of our agreements, whether by assurance or Treaty
with the French nation.

Mr. KinG asked the Prime Minister (1) whether the
foreign policy of this country is at the present time
unhampered by any treaties, agreements, or obligations
under which British military forces would, in certain
eventualities, be called upon to be landed on the Continent
and join there in military operations; and (2) whether in
1905, 1908, or 1911 this country spontaneously offered to
France the assistance of a British army to be landed on
the Continent to support France in the event of European
hostilities.

Mr. AsquirH: As has been repeatedly stated, this country
is not under any obligation not public and known to Parlia-
ment which compels it to take part in any war. In other
words, if war arises between European Powers, there are no
unpublished agreements which will restrict or hamper the
freedom of the Government or of Parliament to decide
whether or not Great Britain should participate in a war.
The use that would be made of the naval and military forces
if the Government or Parliament decided to take part in a
war is, for obvious reasons, not a matter about which public
statements can be made beforehand.

House of Commons, March 24, 1913.

Str Epwarp Grey: I have assured the House, and the
Prime Minister has assured the House more than once, that
if any crisis such as this arose we should come before the
House of Commons and be able to say to the House that it
was free to decide what the attitude of the House should
be; that we have no secret engagement which we should
spring upon the House and tell the House that because we
had entered upon that engagement there was an obligation
of honour on the country. . . . I think [the letter] makes it
perfectly clear that what the Prime Minister and I have said
in the House of Commons was perfectly justified as regards
our freedom to decide in a crisis what our line should be,
whether we should intervene or whether we should abstain.

THE COMMITMENT TO FRANCE 35

The Government remained perfectly free and a fortiori the
House of Commons remained perfectly free.
House of Commons, August 3, 1914.

Yet all preparations to the last detail had been made,
as shown by the prompt, secret, and well-organized
dispatch of the Expeditionary Force.

As far back as January 31, 1906, Sir Edward Grey
had written to our Ambassador at Paris describing a
conversation with M. Cambon.

In the first place, since the Ambassador had spoken to
me, a good deal of progress had been made. Our military
and naval authorities had been in communication with the
French, and I assumed that all preparations were ready, so
that, if a crisis arose, no time would have been lost for want
of a formal engagement.

Lord Grey writes in his book, Twenty-Five Years

(published in 1925), with regard to his declaration in
August 1914:

It will appear, if the reader looks back to the conversations
with Cambon in 1906, that not only British and French
military, but also naval, authorities were in consultation.
But naval consultations had been put on a footing satisfactory
to France in 1905, before the Liberal Government had come
into office. The new step taken by us in January 1906 had
been to authorize military conversations on the same footing
as the naval ones. It was felt to be essential to make clear
to the House that its liberty of decision was not hampered
by any engagements entered into previously without its
knowledge. Whatever obligation there was to France arose
from what those must feel who had welcomed, approved, and
sustained the Anglo-French friendship, that was open and
known to all. In this connection there was nothing to dis-
close, except the engagement about the north and west
coasts of France taken a few hours before, and the letters
exchanged with Cambon in 1912, the letter that expressly
Stipulated there was no engagement.

36 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

One of the things which contributed materially to the
unanimity of the country (on the outbreak of war) was
that the Cabinet were able to come before Parliament and
say that they had not made a secret agreement behind their
backs.

Viscount Grey, receiving the Freedom of Glasgow, January 4,

1921. Reported in ‘‘ The Times.”

His constant repetition of this assurance is the best
proof of his natural and obvious doubt that it was true.

But he continues the attempt at self-exculpation
years after in his book, Twenty-Five Years. Outlining the
considerations in his mind prior to the outbreak of
war :

(3) That, if war came, the interest of Britain required
that we should not stand aside while France fought alone
in the west, but must support her. I knew it to be very
doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country
would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through
the whole of this week I had in view the probable con-
tingency that we should not decide at the critical moment
to support France. In that event I should have to resign. ...

(4) A clear view that no pledge must be given, no hope
even held out to France fa Russia which it was doubtful
whether this country would fulfil. One danger I saw. ...
It was that France and Russia might face the ordeal of war
with Germany relying on our support; that this support
might not be forthcoming, and that we might then, when it
was too late, be held responsible by them for having let
them in for a disastrous war. Of course I could resign if I
gave them hopes which it turned out that the Cabinet
and Parliament would not sanction. But what good would
my resignation be to them in their ordeal ?

After quoting the King-Byles questions, June 11,
1914, he says :

The answer given is absolutely true. The criticism to
which it is open is that it does not answer the question put
to me, That is undeniable. Parliament has unqualified

THE COMMITMENT TO FRANCE 37

right to know of any agreements or arrangements that bind
the country to action or restrain its freedom. But it cannot
be told of military and naval measures to meet possible
contingencies. So long as Governments are compelled to
contemplate the possibility of war, they are under a necessity
to take precautionary measures, the object of which would
be defeated if they were made public. . . . If the question
had been pressed, I must have declined to answer it and have
given these reasons for doing so. Questions in the previous
year about military arrangements with France had been put
aside by the Prime Minister with a similar answer.

Neither the Franco-British military nor the Anglo-
Russian naval conversations compromised the freedom of
this country, but the latter were less intimate and important
than the former. I was therefore quite justified in saying
that the assurances given by the Prime Minister still held
good. Nothing had been done that in any way weakened
them, and this was the assurance that Parliament was entitled
to have. Political engagements ought not to be kept
secret ; naval or military preparations for contingencies of
war ate necessary, but must be kept secret. In these
instances care had been taken to ensure that such prepara-
tions did not involve any political engagement.

In the recently published official papers Sir Eyre
Crowe, in a memorandum to Sir Edward Grey, July 31,

1914, Says:

The argument that there is no written bond binding us to
France is strictly correct. There is no contractual obligation.
But the Entente has been made, strengthened, put to the test,
and celebrated in a manner justifying the belief that a moral
bond was being forged. The whole of the Entente can
have no meaning if it does not signify that in a just quarrel
England would stand by her friends. This honourable
expectation has been raised. We cannot repudiate it without
exposing our good name to grave criticism.

I venture to think that the contention that England cannot
in any circumstances go to war is not true, and that any
endorsement of it would be political suicide.

38 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

This is the plain common-sense official view which
Sir E. Grey had before him. To insist that Parliament
was free because the “‘ honourable expectation ” was not
in writing was a deplorable subterfuge.

Lord Lansdowne, in the House of Lords on August 6,
1914, after referring to “‘ Treaty obligations and those
other obligations which are not less sacred because
they are not embodied in signed and sealed documents,”
said :

Under the one category fall our Treaty obligations to
Belgium. . . . To the other category belong our obligations
to France—obligations of honour which have grown up in
consequence of the close intimacy by which the two nations
have been united during the last few years.

The idea that Parliament was free and was consulted
on August 3rd also falls to the ground as a sham, owing
to the fact that on August 2nd the naval protection of
the French coast and shipping had been guaranteed by
the Government. Parliament was not free in any case,
owing to the commitments, but this made “ consulta-
tion ” and parliamentary sanction an absolute farce.

As The Times said on August sth, by this guarantee
Great Britain was “ definitely committed to the side of
France’; and M. Cambon, the French Ambassador, in
an interview with M. Recouly, said: “‘ A great country
cannot make war half-way. The moment it has decided
to fight on the sea it has fatally obligated itself to fight
also on land.”’!

A Press opinion of the commitment may be given:

Take yet another instance which is fresh in everyone’s
recollection, viz. the arrangements as to the co-operation
of the military staffs of Great Britain and France before the

™ Les Heures tragique d avant Guerre, p. $5.

THE COMMITMENT TO FRANCE 39

war. It was not until the very eve of hostilities that the
House of Commons learned anything as to the nature of
those arrangements. It was then explained by Sir Edward
Grey that Great Britain was not definitely committed to go
to the military assistance of France. There was no treaty.
There was no convention. Great Britain, therefore, was
free to give help or to withhold it, and yet, though there had
been no formal commitment, we were fast bound by every
consideration of honour, and the national conscience felt
this instinctively, though it was only the invasion of Belgium
which brought in the waverers and doubters. That situation
arose out of secret diplomacy, and it is one which must
never be allowed to spring again from the same cause. For
we can conceive nothing more dangerous than for a Govern-
ment to commit itself in honour, though not in technical
fact, and then to make no adequate military preparations on
the ground that the technical commitment has not been
entered into.
“ Daily Telegraph,” September 1917.

Lord Haldane frankly admits, in Before the War,
what he was doing in 1906. He says that the problem
which presented itself to him in 1906 was “‘ how to
mobilize and concentrate at a place of assembly to be
opposite the Belgian frontier,” a British expeditionary
force of 160,000.

Mr. Lioyp GerorGE (speaking of the beginning of the
war): We had a compact with France that if she were
wantonly attacked, the United Kingdom would go to her
support.

Mr. HoGcce: We did not know that!

Mr. Lioyp GreorGE: If France were wantonly attacked.

An Hon. MemBer: That is news.

Mr. Lioyp GrorGE: There was no compact as to what
force we should bring into the arena. . . . Whatever arrange-
ments we come to, I think history will show that we have
more than kept faith.

House of Commons, August 7, 1918.

40 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

In spite, then, of Lord Grey’s assurances of the
freedom of Parliament, it becomes clear that had Parlia-
ment taken the other course, Great Britain would have
broken faith with France.

Some foreign opinions may be given:

In the French Chamber, September 3, 1919, M. Franklin-
Bouillon, criticizing the Triple Alliance, suggested in 1919
between French, British, and American Governments,
declared that France was better protected by the Anglo-
French understanding of 1912, “‘ which assured us the
support of six divisions,” and—upon an interruption by
M. Tardieu—agreed that the “ text’ of the understanding
did not specify six divisions, but that staff collaboration had
“‘ prearranged everything for the mobilization and immediate
embarkation of six divisions.”

In April 1913 M. Sazonov reported to the Czar:

Without hesitating, Grey stated that should the conditions
under discussion arise, England would stake everything in
order to inflict the most serious blow to German power. . . .
Arising out of this, Grey, upon his own initiative, corro-
borated what I already knew from Poincaré, the existence
of an agreement between France and Great Britain, according
to which England engaged itself, in case of a war with
Germany, not only to come to the assistance of France on
the sea, but also on the Continent by landing troops.

The intervention of England in the war had been antici-
pated. A military convention existed with England which
could not be divulged as it bore a secret character. We
relied upon six English divisions and upon the assistance of
the Belgians.

Marshall Joffre before a Paris Commission, July 5, 1919.

A comparison of the successive plans of campaign of
the French General Staff enables us to determine the exact
moment when English co-operation, in consequence of
these promises, became part of our military strategy.
Plan 16 did not allow for it; Plan 16a, drawn up in Sep-

THE COMMITMENT TO FRANCE 41

tember 1911, takes into account the presence of an English
Army on our left wing. The Minister of War (Messimy)
said: “Our conversations with General Wilson, representing
the British General Staff at the time of the Agadir affair,
enabled us to have the certainty of English intervention in
the event of aconflict.” The representative of the British
General Staff had promise of the help of 100,000 men, but
stipulating that they should land in France because, as he
argued, a landing at Antwerp would take much longer.
From “ La Victoire,” by Fabre Luce.

The British and French General Staffs had for years been
in close consultation with one another on this subject.
The area of concentration for the British forces had been
fixed on the left flank of the French and the actual detraining
stations of the various units were all laid down in terrain
lying between Maubeuge and Le Cateau. The headquarters
of the army were fixed at the latter place.

Lord French's book on the war, 1919.

As to the danger of the secrecy which was the cause
of the denials and evasions, three quotations may be
given.

Mr. Bonar Law: .. . It has been said—and I think it
is very likely true—that if Germany had known for certain
that Great Britain would have taken part in the war, the
war would never have occurred.

House of Commons, July 18, 1918.

Lord Loreburn, in How the War Came, says: ‘‘ The con-
cealment from the Cabinet was protracted and must have
been deliberate.”

Mr. AusTEN CHAMBERLAIN: . . . We found ourselves on
a certain Monday listening to a speech by Lord Grey at
this box which brought us face to face with war and upon
which followed our declaration. That was the first public
notification to the country, or to anyone by the Govern-
ment of the day, of the position of the British Government
and of the obligations which it had assumed. ... Was

42 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

the House of Commons free to decide? Relying upon the
arrangements made between the two Governments, the
French coast was undefended—I am not speaking of
Belgium, but of France. There had been the closest
negotiations and arrangements between our two Govern-
ments and our two staffs. There was not a word on paper
binding this country, but in honour it was bound as it had
never been bound before—I do not say wrongfully; I
think rightly.

Mr. T. P. O'Connor: It should not have been secret.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I agree. That is my whole point, and
Iam coming to it. Can we ever be indifferent to the French
frontier or to the fortunes of France? A friendly Power in
possession of the Channel ports is a British interest, treaty
or no treaty. . . . Suppose that engagement had been made
publicly in the light of day. Suppose it had been laid before
this House and approved by this House, might not the
events of those August days have been different? ... If
we had had that, if our obligations had been known and
definite, it is at least possible, and I think it is probable, that
war would have been avoided in 1914.

House of Commons, February 8, 1922.

There can be no question, therefore, that the deliberate
denials and subterfuges, kept up till the last moment
and fraught as they were with consequences of such
magnitude, constitute a page in the history of secret
diplomacy which is without parallel and afford a signal
illustration of the slippery slope of official concealments.

II

SERBIA AND THE MURDER OF THE
ARCHDUKE

THE murder at Serajevo of the Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, nephew of the Emperor Francis Joseph, and
the consequent Austrian ultimatum, are sometimes re-
ferred to as the cause of the war, whereas, of course,
they were only the occasion—the match which set fire to
the well-stored powder magazine. The incident was by
no means a good one for propaganda purposes. Fortu-
nately for the Government, the Serajevo assassination,
together with the secret commitment to France, was
allowed to fall into the background after the invasion of
Belgium. It was extremely difficult to make the Serbian
cause popular. John Bull exploded at once with “‘ To
Hell with Serbia,” and most people were naturally
averse to being dragged into a European war for such
a cause. Some wondered what the attitude of our own
Government would have been had the Prince of Wales
been murdered in similar circumstances, and a doubtful
frame of mind existed. ‘The Serbian case, therefore,
had to be written up, and “ poor little Serbia” had to
be presented as an innocent small nationality subjected
to the offensive brutality of the Austrians.

The following extract from The Times leader, Septem-
ber 15, 1914, is a good sample of how public opinion
was worked up:

The letter which we publish this morning from Sir
Valentine Chirol is a welcome reminder of the duty we owe

44 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

to the gallant army and people. . . . We are too apt to
overlook the splendid heroism of the Servian people and
the sacrifices they have incurred. ... And Servia has
amply deserved support. . . . Nor ought we to forget that
this European war of liberation was precipitated by Austro-
German aggression upon Servia. The accusations of
complicity in the Sarajevo crime launched against Servia as
a pretext for aggression have not been proved. It is more
than doubtful whether they are susceptible of proof... .
While there is thus every reason for not accepting Austrian
charges, there are the strongest reasons for giving effective
help to a gallant ally who has fought for a century in defence
of the principle of the independence of little States which
we ourselves are now fighting to vindicate with all the
resources of our Empire.

Mr. Lloyd George, speaking at the Queen’s Hall on
September 21, 1914, said:

If any Servians were mixed up with the murder of the
Archduke, they ought to be punished for it. Servia admits
that. The Servian Government had nothing to do with it.
Not even Austria claimed that. The Servian Prime Minister
is one of the most capable and honoured men in Europe.
Servia was willing to punish any of her subjects who had
been proved to have any complicity in that assassination.
What more could you expect ?

Punch gave us ‘“‘ Heroic Serbia,” a gallant Serb
defending himself on a mountain pass.

Between June 28 and July 23, 1914, no arrests were
made or explanation given by the Serbian Government.
The Austrian representative, Von Storck, was told:
“The police have not concerned themselves with the
affair.” The impression given was that entirely irre-
sponsible individuals, unknown to anyone in authority,
were the criminals. As the war proceeded the matter
was lost sight of, and our Serbian ally and its Govern-

SERBIA AND MURDER OF ARCHDUKE 4;

ment were universally accepted as one of the small
outraged nationalities for whose liberation and rights
British soldiers were willingly prepared to sacrifice their
lives.

The revelations as to the complicity of the Serbian
Government in the crime did not appear till 1924,
when an article was published entitled, “* After Vidovdan,
1914,” by Ljuba Jovanovitch, President of the Serbian
Parliament, who had been Minister of Education in the
Cabinet of M. Pashitch in 1914. The relevant extracts
from this article may be given.

I do not remember if it were the end of May or the
beginning of June when, one day, M. Pashitch told us that
certain persons were preparing to go to Serajevo, in order
to kill Franz Ferdinand, who was expected there on
Vidovdan (Sunday, June 28th). He told this much to us
others, but he acted further in the affair only with Stojan
Protitch, then Minister of the Interior. As they told me
afterwards, this was prepared by a society of secretly
organized men, and by the societies of patriotic students of
Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Belgrade. M. Pashitch and we
others said (and Stojan Protitch agreed) that he, Stojan,
should order the authorities on the Drin frontier to prevent
the crossing of the youths who had left Belgrade for the
purpose. But these frontier authorities were themselves
members of the organization, and did not execute Stojan’s
order, and told him, and he afterwards told us, that the
order had come too late, for the youths had already crossed
over. Thus failed the Government attempt to prevent the
outrage (afentfat) that had been prepared.

This makes it clear that the whole Cabinet knew of
the plot some time before the murder took place ; that
the Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior knew in
which societies it had been prepared; that the frontier
guard was deeply implicated and working under the
orders of those who were arranging the crime.

46 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

There failed also the attempt of our Minister of Vienna,
made on his own initiative, to the Minister Bilinski, to turn
the Archduke from the fatal path which had been planned.
Thus the death of the Archduke was accomplished in cir-
cumstances more awful than had been foreseen and with
consequences no one could have even dreamed of.

No official instruction was sent to Vienna to warn the
Archduke. ‘The Minister acted on his own initiative.
This is further substantiated by a statement of M.
Pashitch quoted in the Standard, July 21, 1914.

Had we known of the plot against the late Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, assuredly we should have informed the
Austro-Hungarian Government.

He did know of the plot, but gave no warning to the
Austro-Hungarian Government.

In an article in the Neues Wiener Tageblatt, June 28,
1924, Jovan Jovanovitch, the Serbian Minister in
Vienna, explained that the warning he gave was in the
form of a personal and unprompted opinion that the
manceuvres were provocative and the Archduke might
be shot by one of his own troops.

Ljuba Javanovitch describes his reception of the
news :

On Vidovdan (Sunday, June 28, 1914) in the afternoon I
was at my country house at Senjak. About 5 p.m. an
official telephoned to me from the Press Bureau telling what
had happened at Serajevo. And although I knew what was
being prepared there, yet, as I held the receiver, it was as
though someone had unexpectedly dealt me a heavy blow.
When later the news was confirmed from other quarters a
heavy anxiety oppressed me... . I saw that the position
of our Government with regard to other Governments
would be very difficult, far worse than after May 29, 1903
(the murder of King Alexander).

SERBIA AND MURDER OF ARCHDUKE 47

In La Fédération Balcanique Nicola Nenadovitch asserts
that King Alexander, the Russian Minister Hartwig, and
the Russian military attaché Artmanov, as well as
Pashitch, were privy to the plot.

The Austrian Government, in its ultimatum, demanded
the arrest of one Ciganovitch. He was found, but
mysteriously disappeared. This man played an important
part. Colonel Simitch, in Clarté, May 1925, describes
him as a link between Pashitch and the conspirators,
and says: ‘‘M. Pashitch sent his agent into Albania.”
The report of the Salonika trial shows that he was a
spy and agent provocateur to the Serb Government.
He was “‘ Number 412” in the list of “the Black
Hand,” a revolutionary society known to and encouraged
by the Government (M. Pashitch’s nephew was a
member). Its head was Dimitrijevitch, the chief officer
of the Intelligence Staff, an outstanding figure who led
the assassination of King Alexander and his Queen in
1903. The agent of the Black Hand in Serajevo was
Gatchinovitch, who organized the murder, plans having
been laid months beforehand. The first attempt with a
bomb was made by Chabrinovitch, who was in the
Serbian State printing office. Printzip, a wild young man
who was simply a tool, actually committed the murder.
When he and the other murderers were arrested they
confessed that it was through Ciganovitch that they
had been introduced to Major Tankositch, supplied
with weapons and given shooting lessons. After the
Salonika trial the Pashitch Government sent Ciganovitch,
as a reward for his services, to America with a false
passport under the name of Danilovitch. After the
war was over Ciganovitch returned, and the Govern-
ment gave him some land near Uskub, where he then
resided.

48 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

That the Austrian Government should have recognized
that refusal to either find Ciganovitch or permit others
to look for him meant guilt on the part of the Serbian
Government and therefore resorted to war is not
surprising.

A postcard was found at Belgrade “‘ poste restante,”
written from Serajevo by one of the criminals to one of
his comrades in Belgrade. But this was not followed
up. As Ljuba says:

On the whole it could be expected that Vienna would
not succeed in proving any connection between official
Serbia and the event on the Miljacka.

The remark of a Serbian student sums up the case:
“You see, the plan was quite successful. We have
made Great Serbia.” And M. Pashitch himself, on
August 13, 1915, declared :

Never in history has there been a better outlook for the
Serbian nation than has arisen since the outbreak of war.

It came as a surprise to the Serbian Government that
any excitement should have been caused by the revelation
of Ljuba. They thought that Great Britain understood
what had happened, and in her eagerness to fight
Germany had jumped at the excuse. When, however,
the truth came out, proceedings were instituted to
expel Ljuba from the Radical Party. Nothing which
transpired on this occasion, however, produced a
categorical denial from M. Pashitch of the charge made
by Ljuba. He evaded the issue so far as possible.

There appears to be no doubt that before the end of
the war the British War Office was officially informed
that Dimitrijevitch, of the Serbian Intelligence Staff,
was the prime author of the murder. He was executed

SERBIA AND MURDER OF ARCHDUKE 49

at Salonika in 1917, his existence having been found to
be inconvenient. But when it came to the framing of
the Peace Treaties at Versailles, there was a conspiracy of
silence on the whole subject.

This terrible instance of deception should be classed
as a Serbian lie, but its acceptance was so widespread
that half Europe became guilty of complicity in it, and
even if the truth did reach other Chancelleries and
Foreign Offices of the Allied Powers during the war, it
would have been quite impossible for them to reveal
it. Had the truth been known, however, in July 1914,
the opinion of the British people with regard to the
Austrian ultimatum would have been very different from
what it was.

III
INVASION OF BELGIUM AS CAUSE OF WAR

WHATEVER may have been the causes of the Great
War, the German invasion of Belgium was certainly
not one of them, It was one of the first consequences
of war. Nor was it even the reason of our entry into
the war. But the Government, realizing how doubtful
it was whether they could rouse public enthusiasm over
a secret obligation to France, was able, owing to
Germany’s fatal blunder, to represent the invasion of
Belgium and the infringement of the Treaty of Neutrality
as the cause of our participation in it.

We know now that we were committed to France by
an obligation of honour, we know now that Sir Edward
Grey would have resigned had we not gone in on the
side of France, and we also know that Mr. Bonar Law
committed the Conservative Party to the support of
war before the question of the invasion of Belgium
arose.

The Government already know, but I give them now the
assurance on behalf of the party of which I am Leader in
this House, that in whatever steps they think it necessary to
take for the honour and security of this country, they can
rely on the unhesitating support of the Opposition.

Quoted in “ Twenty-Five Years,” by Viscount Grey.

The invasion of Belgium came as a godsend to the
Government and the Press, and they jumped to take
advantage of this pretext, fully appreciating its value
from the point of view of rallying public opinion.

INVASION OF BELGIUM CAUSE OF WAR 51

We are going into a war that is forced upon us as the
defenders of the weak and the champions of the liberties of
Europe.

“< The Times,” August 5, 1914.

It should be clearly understood when it was and why it
was we intervened. It was only when we were confronted
with the choice between keeping and breaking solemn
obligations, between the discharge of a binding trust and of
shameless subservience to naked force, that we threw away
the scabbard. ... We were bound by our obligations,
plain and paramount, to assert and maintain the threatened
independence of a small and neutral State (Belgium).

Mr. Asquith, House of Commons, August 27, 1914.

The treaty obligations of Great Britain to that little land
(Belgium) brought us into the war.
Mr. Lioyd George, January 5, 1918.

Neither of these statements by successive Prime
Ministers is true. We were drawn into the war
because of our commitment to France. The attack on
Belgium was used to excite national enthusiasm. A
phrase to the same effect was inserted in the King’s
Speech of September 18, 1914.

I was compelled in the assertion of treaty obligations
deliberately set at naught . . . to go to war.

The two following extracts put the matter correctly :

They do not reflect that our honour and our interest
must have compelled us to join France and Russia even if
Germany had scrupulously respected the rights of her small
neighbours, and had sought to hack her way into France
through the Eastern fortresses.

“ The Times,” March 15, 1915.

Str D. MACLEAN: We went into the war on account of
Belgium.
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: We had such a treaty with Belgium.

§2 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Had it been France only, we could not have stayed out
after the conversations that had taken place. It would not
have been in our interests to stay out, and we could not
have stayed out without loss of security and honour.

House of Commons, February 8, 1922.

But in addition to the attack on Belgium being
declared to be the cause of the war, it was also repre-
sented as an unprecedented and unwarrantable breach of
a treaty. To this day “the Scrap of Paper” (a
facsimile of the treaty) is framed on the walls of some
elementary schools.

There is no nation which has not been guilty of the
breach of a treaty. After war is declared, treaties are
scrapped right and left. There were other infringe-
ments of neutrality during the war. The infringement
of a treaty is unfortunately a matter of expediency, not
a matter of international morality. In 1887, when there
was a scare of an outbreak of war between France and
Germany, the Press, including the Standard, which
was regarded at that time more or less as a Govern-
ment organ, discussed dispassionately and with calm
equanimity the possibility of allowing Germany to pass
through Belgium in order to attack France. The
Standard argued that it would be madness for Great
Britain to oppose the passage of German troops through
Belgium, and the Spectator said: ‘‘ We shall not bar, as
indeed we cannot bar, the traversing of her soil.” We
were not more sensitive to our treaty obligations in
1914 than we were in 1887. But it happened that in
1887 we were on good terms with Germany and on
strained terms with France. The opposite policy,
therefore, suited our book better.

Moreover, the attack on Belgium did not come as a
surprise. All our plans were made in preparation for it.

INVASION OF BELGIUM CAUSE OF WAR 53

The Belgian documents which were published disclosed
the fact that the “ conversations”? of 1906 concerned
very full plans for military co-operation in the event of
a German invasion of Belgium, but similar plans were
not drawn up between Belgium and Germany. The
French and British are referred to as the A//ied armies,
Germany as “the enemy.” Full and elaborate plans
were made for the landing of British troops.

Politically the invasion of Belgium was a gross error.
Strategically it was the natural and obvious course to
take. Further, we know now that had Germany not
violated Belgian neutrality, France would have. The
authority for this information, which from the point of
view of military strategy is perfectly intelligible, is
General Percin, whose articles in ? Ere Nouvelle in 1925
are thus quoted and commented on in the Manchester
Guardian of January 27, 1925.

VIOLATION OF BELGIAN NEUTRALITY
INTENDED BY FRANCE.

ALLEGATIONS BY A FRENCH GENERAL.

(From our own Correspondent.)
Paris, Monday.

Immediately before Great Britain’s entry into the war in
1914 the British Government inquired both in Berlin and
Paris whether Belgian neutrality was going to be respected.
Was the addressing of this inquiry to France a pure matter
of form ?

If General Percin, the well-known Radical non-Catholic
French General, is to be believed, apparently not, for he
declares authoritatively in a series of articles that he has
begun in the Ere Nouvelle that the violation of Belgian
neutrality had for many years been an integral part of the
war plans of the French General Staff and even of the French
Government.

54 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

The controversy that has started, it need hardly be said, is
of world importance, for it disposes in a large moral degree
of the Scrap of Paper stigma against Germany.

General Percin, it must be admitted, is an embittered
man, though no one has yet been found to question his
honour or capacity. He is a Protestant—a rare thing in
the high ranks of the French Army—and has always been
at loggerheads with the military hierarchy of the General
Staff. That is little wonder, for he was chief of the Cabinet
to General André, Minister of War in the Combes Cabinet,
when in the Dreyfus affair a more or less vain effort was
made to purge the High Command. General Percin’s
principal interest was in artillery, and the German papers
during the war credited him with having been principally
responsible for the adoption of the famous +75. The
deposition of General Percin from the military command at
Lisle in the first few weeks of the war has never been clearly
explained. It seems to have been part of a vendetta. At
any rate, that no disgrace was implied was shown by the
later grant to him of the Grand Cordon of the Legion of
Honour,

A Discovery OF 1910-11.

General Percin’s evidence in Ere Nonvelle dates from the
time when he was one of the chiefs of the Superior Council
of War. “I took a personal part,” he writes, “in the
winter of 1910-11 in a great campaign organized in the
Superior Council of War, of which I was then a member.
The campaign lasted a week. It showed that a German
attack on the Alsace-Lorraine front had no chance of
success; that it would inevitably be smashed against the
barriers accumulated in that region, and that (Germany
would) be obliged to violate Belgian neutrality.

** The question was not discussed whether we should follow
the German lead in such violation and if necessary anticipate
it ourselves, or whether we should await the enemy on this
side of the Belgian frontier. That was a question of a
Governmental rather than of a military kind. But any
commander of troops who in time of war learns that the
enemy has the intention of occupying a point the position
of which gives him tactical advantage has the imperative

INVASION OF BELGIUM CAUSE OF WAR 55

duty to try to occupy that point first himself, and as soon
as ever he can. If any of us had said that out of respect for
the treaty of 1839 he would on his own initiative have
remained on this side of the Belgian frontier, thus bringing
the war on to French territory, he would have been scorned
by his comrades and by the Minister of War himself.

*“ We were all of us in the French army partisans of the
tactical offensive. It implied the violation of Belgian
neutrality, for we knew the intentions of the Germans. I
shall be told that on our part it would not have been a
French crime, but a retort, a riposte to a German crime. No
doubt. But every entry into war professes to be such a
riposte. You attack the enemy because you attribute to
him the intention of attacking you.”

On August 31, 1911, the Chiefs of the French and Russian
General Staffs signed an agreement that the words
** defensive war” should not be taken literally, and then
affirmed “the absolute necessity for the French and Russian
armies of taking a vigorous offensive as far as possible
simultaneously.”’

According to General Percin, that “‘ vigorous offensive ”’
meant French violation of Belgian neutrality.

“Could we take a vigorous offensive without the violation
of Belgian neutrality? Could we really deploy our
1,300,000 men on the narrow front of Alsace-Lorraine ?”’

VIOLATION OF BELGIUM INEVITABLE.

He asserts categorically that in the mind of the French
General Staff the war was to take place in Belgium, and,
indeed, six months after the signature of the agreement
between the French and Russian General Staffs quoted
above, Artillery-Colonel Picard, at the head of a group of
officers of the General Staff, made a tour in Belgium to study
utilization, when the time should come, of this field of
operations.

General Percin concludes: “The treaty of 1839 could
not help but be violated either by the Germans or by us.
It had been invented to make war impossible. The question
that we have to judge upon, then, is this: Which of the
two, France or Germany, wanted war the most? Not

56 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

which showed most contempt for this treaty. The one
that willed war more than the other could not help but will
the violation of Belgian territory.”

A number of extracts might be given to show that
the invasion of Belgium was expected. Yet no steps
were taken in the years before the war to reaffirm the
obligations under the old treaty of 1839 and make
them a great deal more binding than in actual fact they
were.

The invasion of Belgium was ot the cause of the
war; the invasion of Belgium was mot unexpected ;
the invasion of Belgium did mot shock the moral
susceptibilities of either the British or French Govern-
ments. But it may be admitted that, finding themselves
in the position which they had themselves largely con-
tributed to create, the British and French Governments
in the first stages of the Great War were fully justified,
and indeed urgently compelled, to arrange the facts and
distort the implications as they did, given always the
standard of morality which war involves. To colour
the picture with the pigment of falsehood so as to excite
popular indignation was imperative, and it was done with
complete success.

IV

GERMANY’S SOLE RESPONSIBILITY
FOR THE WAR

THE accusation against the enemy of so/e responsibility
for the war is common form in every nation and in
every war. So far as we are concerned, the Russians
(in the Crimean War), the Afghans, the Arabs, the
Zulus, and the Boers, were each in their turn unprovoked
aggressors, to take only some recent instances. It is a
necessary falsehood based on a momentary biased opinion
of one side in a dispute, and it becomes the indispensable
basis of all subsequent propaganda. Leading articles in
the newspapers at the outbreak of every war ring the
changes on this theme, and are so similarly worded as
to make it almost appear as if standard articles are set
up in readiness and the name of the enemy, whoever he
may be, inserted when the moment comes. Gradually
the accusation is dropped officially, when reason returns
and the consolidation of peace becomes an imperative
necessity for all nations.

It is hardly necessary to give many instances of the
universal declaration of Germany’s sole responsibility,
criminality, and evil intention. Similar declarations
might be collected in each country on both sides in
the war.

It [the declaration of war] is hardly surprising news, for
a long chain of facts goes to show that Germany has
deliberately brought on the crisis which now hangs over

Europe, “The Times,” August-5, 1914.

58 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Germany and Austria have alone wanted this war.
Sir Valentine Chirol, “ The Times,’ August 6, 1914.

And with whom does this responsibility rest? . . . One
Power, and one Power only, and that Power is Germany.
Mr. Asquith at the Guildhall, September 4, 1914.

(We are fighting) to defeat the most dangerous con-
spiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations, carefully,
skilfully, insidiously, clandestinely planned in every detail
with ruthless, cynical determination.

Mr. Lloyd George, August 4, 1917.

Lord Northcliffe, who was in charge of war propa-
ganda, saw how essential it was to make the accusation
the basis of all his activities. “‘ The whole situation of
the Allies in regard to Germany is governed by the
fact that Germany is responsible for the war,” and
again, “‘ The Allies must never be tired of insisting that
they were the victims of a deliberate aggression ”
(Secrets of Crewe House).

Among the few moderate voices in August 1914 was
Lord Rosebery, who wrote :

It was really a spark in the midst of the great powder
magazine which the nations of Europe have been building
up for the last twenty or thirty years... . I do not know
if there was some great organizer. . . . Without evidence I
should be loath to lay such a burthen on the head of any man.

So violently and repeatedly, however, had the accusa-
tion been made in all the Allied countries, that the
Government were forced to introduce it into the Peace
Treaty.

Article 231.—The Allied and Associated Governments
affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany
and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which
the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals

GERMANY’S SOLE RESPONSIBILITY = 59

have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed
upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

When war passions began to subside, the accusation
was gradually dropped. The statesmen themselves even
withdrew it.

The more one reads memoirs and books written in the
various countries of what happened before August 1, 1914,
the more one realizes that no one at the head of affairs quite
meant war at that stage. It was something into which
they glided, or rather staggered and stumbled, perhaps
through folly, and a discussion, I have no doubt, would
have averted it.

Mr. Lloyd George, December 23, 1910.

I cannot say that Germany and her allies were solely
responsible for the war which devastated Europe... .
That statement, which we all made during the war, was a
weapon to be used at the time; now that the war is over it
cannot be used as a serious argument. . . . When it will be
possible to examine carefully the diplomatic documents of
the war, and time will allow us to judge them calmly, it
will be seen that Russia’s attitude was the real and underlying
cause of the world conflict.

Signor Francesco Nitti, former Premier of Italy.

Is there any man or woman—let me say, is there any
child—who does not know that the seed of war in the
modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? ...
This was an industrial and commercial war.

President Woodrow Wilson, September 5, 1919.

I do not claim that Austria or Germany in the first place
had a conscious thought-out intention of provoking a
general war. No existing documents give us the right to
suppose that at that time they had planned anything so
systematic.

M. Raymond Poincaré, 1925.

6o FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

I dare say that the belief in the sole guilt of Germany is
not possible even to M. Poincaré. But if one can construct
a policy based upon the theory of Germany’s sole guilt, it is
clear that one should grimly stick to this theory, or at least
give oneself the appearance of conviction.

General Sukhomlinoff (Russian Minister of War). Quoted by

M. Vaillant Conturier in the Chamber of Deputies (“ Journal

Officiel,” July 5, 1922).
The Press and publicists also changed their tone.

To saddle Germany with the sole responsibility for the
war is from what we already know—and more will come—
an absurdity. To frame a treaty on an absurdity is an
injustice. Humanly, morally, and historically the Treaty of
Versailles stands condemned, quite apart from its economic
monstrosities.

Austin Harrison, Editor “‘ English Review.”

Did vindictive nations ever do anything meaner, falser,
ot more cruel than when the Allies, by means of the
Versailles Treaty, forced Germany to be the scapegoat to
bear the guilt which belonged to all? What nation carries

clean hands and a pure heart ?
Charles F. Dole.

In 1923 the representatives of the nations assembled
on a Temporary Mixed Commission to draft a Treaty of
Mutual Assistance under the auspices of the League of
Nations. Fully aware of what had been declared to
be by their Governments a flagrant and indisputable
instance of unprovoked aggression on the part of
Germany, they found themselves quite unable to define
“unprovoked aggression.” The Belgian, Brazilian,
French, and Swedish delegations said, in the course of a
memorandum :

It is not enough merely to repeat the formula “ unpro-
voked aggression,” for under the conditions of modern

GERMANY’S SOLE RESPONSIBILITY 61

warfare it would seem impossible to decide even in theory
what constitutes a case of aggression.

This view was practically adopted and the Com-
mittee of Jurists, when consulted, suggested that the
term “‘ageression” should be dropped. The future
case under the Covenant of the League of Nations of
a nation which refused the recommendation of the Council
or the verdict of the Court and resorted to arms was
substituted as constituting a war of aggression.

In 1925, in the preamble of the Locarno Pact drawn
up between Germany, France, and Great Britain, there
is not the faintest echo of the accusation; on the
contrary, a phrase is actually inserted as follows :

Anxious to satisfy the desire for security and protection
which animates the peoples upon whom fell the scourge of
the war 1914-1918 (les nations qui ont en a subir le fléau

de la guerre).

This is no place to enter into the question of responsi-
bility, to shift the blame from one nation to another, or
to show the degree in which Germany was indeed
responsible. Sole responsibility is a very different thing
from some responsibility. The Germans and Austrians
were busy, not without good evidence, in accusing
Russia. But the disputes and entanglements and the
deplorable ineptitude of diplomacy on all sides in the
last few weeks were not, any more than the murder of
the Archduke, the cause of the war, although special
documents are always produced to give the false
impression.

The causes were precedent and far-reaching, and it is
doubtful if even the historians of the future will be
able to apportion the blame between the Powers
concerned with any degree of accuracy.

62 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Lord Cecil of Chelwood recently put his finger on
the most undoubted of all the contributory and imme-
diate causes. Speaking in the City in 1927, he referred
to “the gigantic competition in armaments before the
war,” and said :

No one could deny that the state of mind produced by
afmament competitions prepared the soil on which grew up
the terrible plant which ultimately fruited in the Great War.

The above series of quotations will suffice to show
how the sole culpability of the enemy is, as always, a
war-time myth. The great success of the propaganda,
however, leaves the impression fixed for a long time on
the minds of those who want to justify to themselves
their action in supporting the war and of those who have
not taken the trouble to follow the subsequent with-
drawals and denials. Moreover, the myth is allowed to
remain, so far as possible, in the public mind in the
shape of fear of “ unprovoked aggression,” and becomes
the chief, and indeed the sole, justification for prepara-
tions for another war.

V

PASSAGE OF RUSSIAN TROOPS THROUGH
GREAT BRITAIN

No obsession was more widespread through the
war than the belief in the last months of 1914 that
Russian troops were passing through Great Britain to
the Western Front. Nothing illustrates better the
credulity of the public mind in war-time and what
favourable soil it becomes for the cultivation of
falsehood.

How the rumour actually originated it is difficult to
say. There were subsequently several more or less
humorous suggestions made: of a telegram announcing
the arrival of a large number of Russian eggs, referred
to as “‘ Russians”; of the tall, bearded individual who
declared from the window of a train that he came from
** Ross-shire”; and of the excited French officer with
imperfect English pronunciation who went about
near the front, exclaiming, ‘‘ Where are de rations.”
But General Sukhomlinoff, in his memoirs, states that
Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador in Russia,
actually requested the dispatch of “a complete Russian
army corps” to England, and English ships were to be
brought to Archangel for the transport of these troops.
The Russian General Staff, he adds, came to the con-
clusion that “‘ Buchanan had lost his reason.”

Whatever the origin may have been, the rumour
spread like wild-fire, and testimony came from every
part of the country from people who had seen the

64 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Russians. They were in trains with the blinds down,
on platforms stamping the snow off their boots; they
called hoarsely for ‘ vodka” at Carlisle and Berwick-
on-Tweed, and they jammed the penny-in-the-slot
machine with a rouble at Durham. The number of
troops varied according to the imaginative powers of
the witness.

As the rumour had undoubted military value, the
authorities took no steps to deny it. A telegram from
Rome appeared giving “the official news of the con-
centration of 250,000 Russian troops in France.” With
regard to this telegram the official Press Bureau stated :
“That there was no confirmation of the statements
contained in it, but that there was no objection to them
being published.” As there was a strict censorship of
news, the release of this telegram served to confirm
the rumour and kept the false witnesses busy.

On September 9, 1914, the following appeared in the
Daily News :

The official sanction to the publication of the above (the
telegram from Rome) removes the newspaper reserve with
regard to the rumours which for the last fortnight have
coursed with such astonishing persistency through the
length and breadth of England. Whatever be the unvar-
nished truth about the Russian forces in the West, so extra-
ordinary has been the ubiquity of the rumours in question,
that they are almost more amazing if they are false than if
they are true. Either a baseless rumour has obtained a
currency and a credence perhaps unprecedented in history,
or, incredible as it may appear, it is a fact that Russian
troops, whatever the number may be, have been disembarked
and passed through this country, while not one man in ten
thousand was able to say with certainty whether their very
existence was not a myth.

The Press on the whole, was reserved, fearing a

PASSAGE OF RUSSIAN TROOPS 65

trap, and the Daily Mail suggested that the Russian
Consul-General’s statement that ‘“‘ about 5,000 Russian
reservists have permission to serve the Allies’ might
be at the bottom of the rumour. Like a popular book,
the rumour spread more from verbal personal com-
munications than on account of Press notices.

On September 14, 1914, the Daily News again returned
to the subject :

As will be seen from the long dispatch of Mr. P. J. Philip,
our special correspondent, Russian troops are now co-
operating with the Belgians. This information proves the
correctness of the general impression that Russian troops
have been moved through England.

“ Daily News,” September 14, 1914.

(Dispatch.)

To-night, in an evening paper, I find the statement “ de
bonne source” that the German Army in Belgium has been
cut... by the Belgian Army reinforced by Russian troops.
The last phrase unseals my pen. For two days I have been
on a long trek looking for the Russians, and now I have
found them—where and how it would not be discreet to
tell, but the published statement that they are here is suffi-
cient, and of my own knowledge I can answer for their
presence,

An official War Office denial of the rumour was
noted by the Dai/y News on September 16, 1914.

The Daily Mail, September 9, 1914, contained a
facetious article on the Russian rumour, concluding :

But now we are told from Rome that the Russians are in
France. How are we all going to apologize to the Bernets,
Brocklers, and Pendles—if they were right, after all ?

Mr. KinG asked the Under-Secretary of State for War
whether he can state, without injury to the military interests
E

66 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

of the Allies, whether any Russian troops have been con-
veyed through Great Britain to the Western area of the
European War ?

THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr.
Tennant): I am uncertain whether it will gratify or dis-
please my hon. friend to learn that no Russian troops have
been conveyed through Great Britain to the Western area of
the European War.

House of Commons, November 18, 1914.

VI
THE MUTILATED NURSE

Many atrocity stories were circulated which were
impossible to prove or disprove, but in the early months
of the war the public was shocked by a horrible story
of barbarous cruelty, of which a complete record can be
given. It is a curious instance of the ingenuity of the
deliberate individual liar.

A NURSE’S TRAGEDY.

DumrFrigs GIRL THE VICTIM OF SHOCKING BARBARITY.

News has reached Dumfries of the shocking death of a
Dumfries young woman, Nurse Grace Hume, who went out
to Belgium at the outbreak of war. Nurse Hume was
engaged at the camp hospital at Vilvorde, and she was the
victim of horrible cruelty at the hands of German soldiers.
Her breasts were cut off and she died in great agony. Nurse
Hume’s family received a note written shortly before
she died. It was dated September 6th, and ran: “ Dear
Kate, this is to say good-bye. Have not long to live.
Hospital has been set on fire. Germans cruel. A man
here had his head cut off. My right breast has been taken
away. Give my love to Good-bye. GRAcE.”

Nurse Hume’s left breast was cut away after she had
written the note. She was a young woman of twenty-three
and was formerly a nurse in Huddersfield Hospital.

Nurse Mullard, of Inverness, delivered the note personally
to Nurse Hume’s sister at Dumfries. She was also at
Vilvorde, and she states that Nurse Hume acted the part of
a heroine. A German attacked a wounded soldier whom

68 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Nurse Hume was taking to hospital. The nurse took his
gun and shot the German dead.
“ The Star,” September 16, 1914.

LETTER DELIVERED BY NursE MuLLARD TO Miss HuMeE.

I have been asked by your sister, Nurse Grace Hume, to
hand the enclosed letter to you. My name is Nurse Mullard,
and I was with your sister when she died. Our camp
hospital at Vilvorde was burned to the ground, and out of
1,517 men and 23 nurses, only 19 nurses were saved, but
149 men managed to get away. Grace requested me to tell
you that her last thoughts were of and you, and that
you were not to worry over her, as she would be going to
meet her Jack. These were her last words. She endured
great agony in her last hours. One of the soldiers (our
men) caught two German soldiers in the act of cutting off
her left breast, her right one having been already cut
off. They were killed instantly by our soldiers. Grace
managed to scrawl] the enclosed note before I found her, but
we all say that your sister was a heroine. She was out on
the fields looking for wounded soldiers, and on one occa-
sion, when bringing in a wounded soldier, a German
attacked her. She threw the soldier’s gun at him and shot
him with her rifle. Of course, all nurses here are armed.
I have just received word this moment to pack to Scotland.
Will try and get this handed to you, as there is no post
from here, and we are making the best of a broken-down
wagon truck for a shelter. Will give you fuller details
when I see you. We are all quite safe now, as there have
been reinforcements.

A condensed account appeared in the Evening Standard
with the note: ‘‘ This message has been submitted to
the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publica-
tion and takes no responsibility for the correctness of
the statement.”

A story which attracted particular attention both because
of its peculiar atrocity and because of the circumstantial

THE MUTILATED NURSE 69

details which accompanied it, was told in several of the
evening papers on Wednesday. It was first published, we
believe, in the Dumfries Standard on Wednesday morning
and related to an English nurse, who was said to have been
killed by Germans in Belgium with the most revolting
cruelty. This nurse came from Dumfries and, according
to the Dumfries Standard, the story was told to the nurse’s
sister in Dumfries by another nurse from Belgium, who
also gave an account of it in a letter. Further, the Dumfries
Standard published a facsimile of a letter said to have been
written by the murdered nurse when dying to her sister in
Dumfries. The story therefore appeared to be particularly
well authenticated and, as we say, it was published by a
number of London evening papers of repute, including the
Pall Mall and Westminster Gazette, the Globe, the Star, and
the Evening Standard. But late on Wednesday night it was
discovered to be entirely untrue, since the nurse in question
was actually in Huddersfield and had never been to Belgium,
though she volunteered for the front. The remaining fact
is that her sister in Dumfries states, according to the York-
shire Post, that she was visited by a “‘ Nurse Mullard,” pro-
fessing to be a nurse from Belgium, who told her the story
and gave her the letter from her sister in a handwriting that
resembled her sister’s.
“ Times”? Leader, September 18, 1914.

The Times goes on to call for an inquiry and to suggest
that the story may have been invented by German agents
in order to discredit all atrocity stories.

Kate Hume, seventeen, was charged at Dumfries yesterday,
before Sheriff Substitute Primrose, with having uttered a
forged letter purporting to have been written by her sister,
Nurse Grace Hume, in Huddersfield. She declined to make
any statement, on the advice of her agent, and was com-
mitted to prison to await trial.

“* The Times,” September 30, 1914.

The case came before the High Court at Dumfries, and

70 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

it was proved that Kate Hume (the sister) had fabricated
the whole story and forged both the letter from her sister
and that from “‘ Nurse Mullard” and had communicated
them to the Press.

“ The Times,’ December 29 and 30, 1914.

vil
THE CRIMINAL KAISER

HavinG declared the enemy the sole culprit and origi-
nator of the war, the next step is to personify the enemy.
As a nation consists of millions of people and the
absurd analogy of an individual criminal and a nation
may become apparent even to moderately intelligent
people, it is necessary to detach an individual on whom
may be concentrated all the vials of the wrath of an
innocent people who are only defending themselves
from “ unprovoked aggression.” The sovereign is the
obvious person to choose. While the Kaiser on many
occasions, by his bluster and boasting, had been a
subject of ridicule and offence, nevertheless, not many
years before, his portrait had appeared in the Daily Mail
with “A friend in need is a friend indeed ” under it.
And as late as October 17, 1913, the Evening News wrote:

We all acknowledge the Kaiser as a very gallant gentleman
whose word is better than many another’s bond, a guest
whom we are always glad to welcome and sorry to lose, a
ruler whose ambitions for his own people are founded on as
good right as our own.

When the signal was given, however, all this could
be forgotten and the direct contrary line taken. The
Kaiser turned out to be a most promising target for
concentrated abuse. So successfully was it done that
exaggeration soon became impossible; every crime in
the calendar was laid at his door authoritatively, publicly
and privately; and this was kept up all through the

72 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

war. His past was reviewed, greatly to his discredit.
Over his desire to fight Great Britain while we were
engaged in the Boer War, however, there was an
unfortunate contradiction in point of fact, as the following
two extracts show:

Delcass¢, with the help of the Czar, thrust aside German
proposals for a Continental combination against us during
the Boer War.

“ The Times,” October 14, 1915 (editorial on Delcassé’s resig-

nation).

At the time of the South African War, other nations
were prepared to assist the Boers, but they stipulated that
Germany should do likewise. The Kaiser refused.

General Botha, reported in the “Daily News,” September 3, 1915.

But over his criminality in the Great War there was
no difference of opinion.

He had called a secret Council of the Central Powers
at Potsdam early in July 1914, at which it was decided
to enforce war on Europe. This secret plot was first
divulged by a Dutch newspaper in September 1914.
The story was revived by The Times on July 28, 1917,
and again in November 1919. It was believed even in
Germany, until reports were received from various
officers in touch with the Kaiser showing how he spent
these days, and it was finally disposed of and proved to
be a myth by the testimony of all those supposed to
have taken part in it. This was in 1919, after the story
had served its purpose.

Only a few of the thousand references to the Kaiser’s
personal criminality need be given.

He (the enemy) is beginning to realize the desperate
character of the adventure on which the Kaiser embarked
when he made this wanton war.

“* Daily Mail,” October 1, 1914.

THE CRIMINAL KAISER 73

The following letter from the late Sir W. B. Richmond,
in the Daily Mail of September 22, 1914, is a forcibly
expressed example of the accepted opinion :

Neither England nor civilized Europe and Asia is going
to be set trembling by lunatic William, even though by his
order Rheims Cathedral has been destroyed.

This last act of the barbarian chief will only draw us all
closer together to be rid of a scourge the like of which
the civilized world has never seen before.

The madman is piling up the logs of his own pyre. We
can have no terror of the monster; we shall clench our
teeth in determination that if we die to the last man the
modern Judas and his hell-begotten brood shall be wiped out.

To achieve this righteous purpose we must be patient
and plodding as well as energetic.

Our great England will shed its blood willingly to help
rid civilization of a criminal monarch and a criminal court
which have succeeded in creating out of a docile people a
herd of savages.

Sir James Crichton Browne has said, in Dumfries: “A
halter for the Kaiser’; shooting him would be to give him
the honourable death of a soldier. The halter is the shrift
for this criminal.

Lord Robert Cecil said that for the terrible outrages, the
wholesale breaches of every law and custom of civilized
warfare which the Germans had committed, the people who
were responsible were the German rulers, the Emperor and
those who were closely advising him, and it was upon them,
if possible, that our punishment and wrath should fall.

“< The Times,” May 15, 1915.

Cities have been burned, old men and children have
been murdered, women and young girls have been outraged,
harmless fishermen have been drowned, at this crowned
criminal’s orders. He will have to answer “at that great
day when all the world is judged” for the victims of the
Falaba and the Lusitania.

Leader on depriving the Kaiser of the Order of the Garter,

** Daily Express,” May 14, 1915.

74 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

A Punch cartoon in 1918 depicted the Kaiser as Cain.
Under it was put:

More than 14,000 non-combatants have been murdered by
the Kaiser’s orders.

There was a poster portrait of the Kaiser, his face
composed of corpses, his mouth streaming with blood,
which could be seen on the hoardings. The equivalent
of this in France was “‘ Guillaume le Boucher,” the
Kaiser in an apron with a huge knife dripping with
blood. Throughout he was a good subject for the
caricaturist, as he was so easy to draw.

The fiction having become popular and being uni-
versally accepted in the Allied countries, it became
imperative for the Allied statesmen to insert a special
clause in the Peace Treaty beginning :

The Allied and Associated Powers publicly arraign
William II, of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor,
for a supreme offence against international morality and the
sanctity of treaties,

and going on to describe the constitution of “ the
special tribunal ” before which he was to be tried.
Having committed themselves to the trial of the
Kaiser by a clause in the Peace Treaty, the Allies were
obliged to go through the formality of addressing a
note to the Netherlands Government on January 16,
1920, dwelling on the Kaiser’s “immense responsi-
bility’ and asking for him to be handed over “in
otder that he may be sent for trial.” The refusal of the
Netherlands Government on January 23rd was at once
accepted and saved the Allied Governments from
making hopeless fools of themselves, But before the

THE CRIMINAL KAISER 75

decision was publicly known, and after it had been
privately ascertained that the Government of Holland,
whither the Kaiser had fled, would zo¢ give him up,
the “‘ Hang the Kaiser” campaign was launched, and in
the General Election of 1918 candidates lost votes who
would not commit themselves to this policy.

But the campaign had been launched before the
decision of the Netherlands Government was made
public.

The ruler (the Kaiser), who spoke for her pride and her
majesty and her might for thirty years, is now a fugitive,
soon to be placed on his trial (loud cheers) before the
tribunals of lands which, on behalf of his country, he
sought to intimidate.

Mr. Lloyd George, House of Commons, July 3, 1919.

As a matter of fact, there was not the smallest inten-
tion of doing anything so absurd as try the Kaiser. Nor
did anyone with knowledge of the facts believe him to
be in any way personally responsible for starting the
war. He was, and always had been, a tinsel figure-head
of no account, with neither the courage to make a war
nor the power to stop it.

His biographer, Emil Ludwig, has written the most
slashing indictment of William II that has appeared in
any language, showing up his vanity, his megalomania,
and his incompetence. But so far from accusing him
of wanting or engineering the war, the author insists,
time after time, on the Emperor’s pacific attitude.
“In all the European developments between 1908 and
1914, the Emperor was more pacific, was even more
far-sighted, than his advisers.” At the time of the
Morocco crisis “ the Emperor was peacefully inclined,”

* Kaiser William II, by Emil Ludwig.

76 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

and in the last days of July 1914, speaking of Germany,
Austria, and Russia, Ludwig says :

Three Emperors avowedly opposed to war were driven
by the ambition, vindictiveness, and incompetence of their
Ministers into a conflict whose danger for their thrones
they all three recognized from the first and, if only for that
reason, tried to avoid.

Even Lord Grey says, now that it is all over:

If matters had rested with him (the Kaiser) there would
have been no European War arising out of the Austro-
Serbian dispute.

“* Twenty-Five Years,” vol. it, p. 25.

Nevertheless, up to 1919 the Kaiser, as the villain of
the piece, was set up in the Allied countries as the
incarnation of all iniquity.

This very simple form of propaganda had a great
influence on the people’s feelings. There can be no
question that thousands who joined up were under the
impression that the primary object of the war was to
catch this monster, little knowing that war is like chess :
you cannot take the King while the game is going on;
it is against the rules. It would spoil the game. In
the same way G.H.Q. on both sides was never bombed
because, as a soldier bluntly put it, ‘‘ Don’t you see, it
would put an end to the whole bloody business.”

Finding he had unfortunately not been caught or
killed during the war, the people put their faith in his
being tried and hanged when the war was over. If he
was all that had been described to them, this was the
least that could be expected.

When, as months and years passed, it was discovered
that no responsible person really believed, or had ever
believed, in his personal guilt, that the cry, “‘ Hang the

THE CRIMINAL KAISER 77

Kaiser,” was a piece of deliberate bluff, and that when
all was over and millions of innocent people had been
killed, he, the criminal, the monster, the plotter and
initiator of the whole catastrophe, was allowed to live
comfortably and peacefully in Holland, the disillusion-
ment to simple, uninformed people was far greater than
was ever realized. It was the exposure of this crude
falsehood that first led many humble individuals to
inquire whether, in other connections, they had not also
been duped.

VIII
THE BELGIAN BABY WITHOUT HANDS

Nor only did the Belgian baby whose hands had been
cut off by the Germans travel through the towns and
villages of Great Britain, but it went through Western
Europe and America, even into the Far West. No one
paused to ask how long a baby would live were its
hands cut off unless expert surgical aid were at hand to
tie up the arteries (the answer being, a very few minutes).
Everyone wanted to believe the story, and many went so
far as to say they had seen the baby. The lie was as
universally accepted as the passage of the Russian troops
through Britain.

One man whom I did not see told an official of the
Catholic Society that he had seen with his own eyes German
soldiery chop off the arms of a baby which clung to its
mother’s skirts.

“ The Times”? Correspondent in Paris, August 27, 1914.

On September 2, 1914, The Times Correspondent
quotes French refugees declaring: “They cut the
hands off the little boys so that there shall be no more
soldiers for France.”

Pictures of the baby without hands were very popular
on the Continent, both in France and in Italy. Le
Rive Rouge had a picture on September 18, 1915, and on
July 26, 1916, made it still more lurid by depicting
German soldiers eating the hands. Le Journal gave, on
April 30, 1915, a photograph of a statue of a child
without hands. But the most savage of all, which

THE BELGIAN BABY WITHOUT HANDS 79

contained in it no elements of caricature, was issued by
the Allies for propaganda purposes and published in
Critica, in Buenos Ayres (reproduced in the Sphere,
January 30, 1925). The heading of the picture was,
“The Bible before All,” and under it was written:
** Suffer little children to come unto Me.” The Kaiser
is depicted standing behind a huge block with an axe,
his hands darkly stained with blood. Round the block
are piles of hands. He is beckoning to a woman to
bring a number of children, who are clinging to her,
some having had their hands cut off already.

Babies not only had their hands cut off, but they were
impaled on bayonets, and in one case nailed to a door.
But everyone will remember the handless Belgian baby.
It was loudly spoken of in buses and other public
places, had been seen in a hospital, was now in the next
parish, etc., and it was paraded, not as an isolated
instance of an atrocity, but as a typical instance of a
common practice.

In Parliament there was the usual evasion, which
suggested the story was true, although the only evidence
given was “‘ seen by witnesses.”

Mr. A. K. Lioyp asked the First Lord of the Treasury
whether materials are available for identifying and tracing
the survivors of those children whose hands were cut off
by the Germans, and whose cases are referred to by letter
and number in the Report of the Bryce Committee ; and, if
so, whether he will consider the possibility of making the
information accessible, confidentially or otherwise, to persons
interested in the future of these survivors ?

Str G. Cave: My Right Hon. Friend has asked me to
reply to this question. In all but two of the individual
cases in which children were seen by witnesses mutilated in
this manner, the child was either dead or dying from the
treatment it had received. In view of the fact that these

80 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

children were in Belgium, which is still in German occupa-
tion, it is unlikely that they could now be traced, and any
attempt to do so at this time might lead to the further
persecution of the victims or their relatives.

Mr. Lioyp: Were there not other cases brought over
here to hospital ?

Sir G. Cave: Not the cases to which the Hon. Member’s
question refers.

House of Commons, December 19, 1916.

Sometimes the handless person was grown up. A
Mr. Tyler, at a Brotherhood meeting in Glasgow on
April 17, 1915, said he had a friend in Harrogate who
had seen a nurse with both her hands cut off by Germans.
He gave the address of his informant. A letter was at
once addressed to the friend at Harrogate, asking if
the statement was correct, but no reply was ever received.

But the most harrowing and artistically dressed
version of the handless child story appeared in the
Sunday Chronicle on May 2, 1915.

Some days ago a charitable great lady was visiting a
building in Paris where have been housed for several months
a number of Belgian refugees. During her visit she noticed
a child, a girl of ten, who, though the room was hot rather
than otherwise, kept her hands in a pitiful little worn muff.
Suddenly the child said to the mother: “ Mamma, please
blow my nose for me.” “Shocking,” said the charitable
lady, half-laughing, half-severe, “‘a big girl like you, who
can’t use her own handkerchief.” The child said nothing,
and the mother spoke in a dull, matter-of-fact tone. “‘ She
has not any hands now, ma’am,” she said.

The grand dame looked, shuddered, understood. “Can
it be,” she said, “that the Germans 2?” The mother
burst into tears. That was her answer.

Signor Nitti, who was Italian Prime Minister during
the war, states in his memoirs :

THE BELGIAN BABY WITHOUT HANDS 81

To bring the truth of the present European crisis home
to the world it is necessary to destroy again and again the
vicious legends created by war propaganda. During the
war France, in common with other Allies, including our
own Government in Italy, circulated the most absurd
inventions to arouse the fighting spirit of our people. The
cruelties attributed to the Germans were such as to curdle
our blood. We heard the story of poor little Belgian
children whose hands were cut off by the Huns. After
the war a rich American, who was deeply touched by the
French propaganda, sent an emissary to Belgium with
the intention of providing a livelihood for the children
whose poor little hands had been cut off. He was unable
to discover one. Mr. Lloyd George and myself, when at
the head of the Italian Government, carried on extensive
investigations as to the truth of these horrible accusations,
some of which, at least, were told specifically as to names
and places. Every case investigated proved to be a
myth.

Colonel Repington, in his Diary of the World War,
vol. ii, p. 447, says:

I was told by Cardinal Gasquet that the Pope promised
to make a great protest to the world if a single case could
be proved of the violation of Belgian nuns or cutting off
of children’s hands. An inquiry was instituted and many
cases examined with the help of the Belgian Cardinal
Mercier. Not one case could be proved.

The former French Minister of Finance, Klotz, to
whom at the beginning of the war the censorship of
the Press was entrusted, says, in his memoirs (De la
Guerre a la Paix, Paris, Payot, 1924):

One evening I was shown a proof of the Figaro, in which
two scientists of repute asserted and endorsed by their
signatures that they had seen with their own eyes about a
hundred children whose hands had been chopped off by the
Germans.

F

82 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

In spite of the evidence of these scientists I entertained
doubts as to the accuracy of the report and forbade the
publication of it. When the editor of the Figaro expressed
his indignation, I declared myself ready to investigate, in
the presence of the American Ambassador, the matter that
would stir the world. I required, however, that the name
of the place where these investigations had to take place
should be given by the two scientists. I insisted on having
these details supplied immediately. I am still without their
reply or visit.

But this lie obtained such a hold on people’s imagina-
tion that it is by no means dead yet. Quite recently a
Liverpool poet, in a volume called A Medley of Song,
has written the following lines in a “‘ patriotic”? poem :

They stemmed the first mad onrush
Of the cultured German Hun,

Who’d outraged every female Belgian
And maimed every mother’s son.

IX
THE LOUVAIN ALTAR-PIECE

At the Peace Conference the Belgian representatives
claimed the wings of Dietrick Bouts’s altar-piece in com-
pensation for the famous altar-piece from Louvain, a
valuable work of art which they declared had been
wantonly thrown into the flames of the burning library
by a German officer. The story was accepted and the
two pictures transferred. But it was not true.

The New Statesman of April 12, 1924, gives the facts :

The Dietrick Bouts altar-piece was not thrown into the
flames by the Germans or by anyone else. The picture is
still in existence at Louvain, perfectly intact, and the Germans
were not its destroyers but its preservers. A German
officer saved it from the flames and gave it to the burgo-
master, who had it taken for safe custody to the vaults of
the Town Hall and walled in there. It has been duly
unwalled....

xX
THE CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY

THERE can be no question that the most successful
slogan for recruiting purposes issued during the whole
course of the war was the phrase “the contemptible
little army,” said to have been used by the Kaiser in
reference to the British Expeditionary Force. It very
naturally created a passionate feeling of resentment
throughout the country. The history of this lie and of
its exposure is extremely interesting.

In an annexe to B.E.F. Routine Orders of September 24,
1914, the following was issued :

The following is a copy of Orders issued by the German
Emperor on August 19th:

“It is my Royal and Imperial command that you con-
centrate your energies for the immediate present upon one
single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill
and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate first, the
treacherous English, walk over General French’s con-
temptible little army.

. HEADQUARTERS, "AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, August 19th.”

The results of the order were the operations commencing
with Mons, and the advance of the seemingly overwhelming
masses against us. The answer of the British Army on the
subject of extermination has already been given.

Printing Co., R.E.69.

The authenticity of this official military declaration
was naturally never questioned, although one attempt
was made to pretend that it was an incorrect translation.

THE CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY 85

The indignation roused throughout the country was
heartfelt and widespread.

The Times Military Correspondent referred to the
Kaiser as being in “a high state of agitation and
excitability,” and the leader-writer in The Times
(October 1, 1914), referring to the statement, said :

In spite of the ferocious order of the Kaiser . . . to-day.
** French’s contemptible little army” is not yet exterminated.

On the same day The Times printed a poem entitled
** French’s Contemptible Little Army.”

The Kaiser scoffed at the British Army and labelled it
“contemptible” because it was small. He felt grossly
insulted that any army that did not count its men in millions
should dare to assail the might of the Hohenzollerns, and
against this small British David, in a pronouncement which
will certainly be historic, he directed his Goliath legions to
* concentrate their energies.”

“ Daily Express,” October 2, 1914.

Mr. Churchill made great play with it in a recruiting
speech at the London Opera House on September 11,
1914.

In March 1915 Punch had a cartoon of the German
Eagle in conversation with the Kaiser: ‘It’s like this,
then; you told me the British Lion was contemptible
—well—he wasn’t.”

And again, in 1917 (after the entry of America into the
war), a cartoon depicted the Crown Prince saying to
the Kaiser (who is drafting his next speech): “For
Gott’s sake, father, be careful and don’t call the American
Army ‘ contemptible’! ”

There was not a village in the land where the expres-
sion was not known and not a provincial newspaper in
which it was not quoted, until at last the word was

86 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

used as the designation of the officers and men who
were in the original Expeditionary Force. They became
known as “ the old Contemptibles.”

A thorough investigation of the authenticity of this
order, “‘ issued by the Kaiser,” was undertaken in 1925
with the assistance of a German General, who had the
archives in Berlin carefully searched, and of a British
General, Sir F. Maurice, who was able to throw a good
deal of light on the subject.

While the Kaiser’s proverbially foolish indiscretion
might account for any preposterous utterance, it was
known that he did not issue orders of his own volition ;
they were prepared for him by his Staff, which was
certainly not so ignorant of its business as to tell the
German Generals to concentrate their energies upon the
extermination of an army when they could not tell
them where that army was. Their ignorance of the
whereabouts of the British Army was proved by a
telegram sent by the German Chief of the Staff to Von
Kluck on August zoth (the day after the issue of the
supposed order): ‘‘ Disembarkation of English at
Boulogne must be reckoned with. The opinion here,
however, is that large disembarkations have not yet
taken place.”

It was further discovered that German Headquarters
were never at Aix la Chapelle. Headquarters moved
from Berlin about August 15th and went to Coblenz,
later to Luxemburg, from whence they moved to
Charleville on September 27th.

A careful search in the archives proved fruitless. No
such order or anything like it could be discovered.
Not content with this, however, the German General
had inquiries made of the ex-Kaiser himself at Doorn.
In a marginal note the ex-Kaiser declared he had never

THE CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY § 87

used such an expression, adding: ‘“‘ On the contrary,
I continually emphasized the high value of the British
Army, and often, indeed, in peace-time gave warning
against underestimating it.”

General Sir F. Maurice had the German newspaper
files searched for the alleged speech or order of the
Kaiser, but without success. In an article exposing
the fabrication (Daily News, November 6, 1925), he
remarks that G.H.Q. hit on the idea of using routine
orders to issue statements which it was believed would
encourage and inspirit our men. ‘“* Most of these took
the form of casting ridicule on the German Army... .
These efforts were seen to be absurd by the men in the
trenches, and were soon dropped.”

We may laugh now at this lie and some may be
inclined to give some credit to the officer who con-
cocted it, although he made a careless mistake about the
whereabouts of the German G.H.Q. There can be no
doubt as to its immense success, nevertheless there are
many who will share the opinion of a gentleman who
wrote to the Press (Nation and Atheneum, August 8,
1925), who, having heard that doubt was cast on the
authenticity of the well-known and almost hackneyed
phrase, remarked on “its extreme seriousness to our
national honour or to that of the British officer originally
responsible,”’ were it proved to be an invention.

XI
DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES

A GREAT deal of play was made throughout the war
with the opening lines of a German patriotic song.

“Deutschland iiber Alles auf der ganzen Welt.”
(“ Germany above all things in the whole world.”)

There must have been many people who knew
sufficient German to understand the meaning of the
phrase, but no protest was made at the mistranslation,
which was habitually used to illustrate Germany’s
aggressive imperialist ambitions. It was popularly
accepted as meaning, ‘“‘(Let) Germany (rule) over
everywhere in the whole world,” i.e. the German
domination of the world.

Mr. Lloyd George used it on September 20, 1914, at
Queen’s Hall :

Treaties are gone, the honour of nations gone, liberty
gone. What is left? Germany, Germany is left.
Deutschland tiber Alles.

Punch kept it to the front in various cartoons.

The Kaiser, playing on a flute, having abandoned a
broken big drum labelled “‘ Deutschland iiber Alles.”

The Kaiser trying to blow up a pricked balloon labelled
** Deutschland tber Alles.”

The Kaiser as the High Priest of Moloch. Moloch
labelled ‘‘ Deutschland uber Alles.”

It was constantly quoted in numberless articles in the
Press. When a prominent Member of Parliament used

DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES 89

the expression in a letter to The Times, the incorrect
meaning he attributed to it was pointed out to him.
He admitted the error, but seemed to consider that the
accepted meaning of it justified his using it as he did.

The false meaning spread through the country and
the Empire, and the Department of Education in Ontario
went so far as to order the song to be eliminated from
German school books throughout the province (The
Times, March 19, 1915).

Even after the war, in November 1921, a leader-
writer in a prominent newspaper declared that as long
as the Germans stuck to their national anthem,
** Deutschland iiber Alles auf der ganzen Welt,” there
would be no peace in Europe.

XII
THE BABY OF COURBECK LOO

Ir is not often that we have a confession of falsehood,
but the story of the baby of Courbeck Loo is an illu-
minating example of an invention related by its author.
Captain F. W. Wilson, formerly editor of the Sunaay
Times, related the story in America in 1922. The
following account appeared in the New York Times
(reproduced in the Crusader, February 24, 1922):

A correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Captain
Wilson, found himself in Brussels at the time the war broke
out. They telegraphed out that they wanted stories of
atrocities. Well, there weren’t any atrocities at that time.
So then they telegraphed out that they wanted stories of
refugees. So I said to myself, “ That’s fine, I won’t have
to move.” There was a little town outside Brussels where
one went to get dinner—a very good dinner, too. I heard
the Hun had been there. I supposed there must have been
a baby there. So I wrote a heart-rending story about the
baby of Courbeck Loo being rescued from the Hun in the
light of the burning homesteads.

The next day they telegraphed out to me to send the
baby along, as they had about five thousand letters offering
to adopt it. The day after that baby clothes began to pour
into the office. Even Queen Alexandra wired her sympathy
and sent some clothes. Well, I couldn’t wire back to them
that there wasn’t a baby. So I finally arranged with the
doctor that took care of the refugees that the blessed baby
died of some very contagious disease, so it couldn’t even
have a public burial.

And we got Lady Northcliffe to start a créche with all the
baby-clothes,

XIII
THE CRUCIFIED CANADIAN

LIKE so many other stories, this one underwent con-
siderable changes and variations. The crucified person
was at one time a girl, at another an American, but most
often a Canadian.

Last week a large number of Canadian soldiers, wounded
in the fighting round Ypres, arrived at the base hospital at
Versculles. They all told a story of how one of their
officers had been crucified by the Germans. He had been
pinned to a wall by bayonets thrust through his hands and
feet, another bayonet had then been driven through his
throat, and, finally, he was riddled with bullets. The
wounded Canadians said that the Dublin Fusiliers had seen
this done with their own eyes, and they had heard the officers
of the Dublin Fusiliers talking about it.

“* The Times,” May 10, 1915. Paris Correspondent.

There is, unhappily, good reason to believe that the
story related by your Paris Correspondent of the crucifixion
of a Canadian officer during the fighting at Ypres on
April 22, 1923, is in substance true. The story was current
here at the time, but, in the absence of direct evidence and
absolute proof, men were unwilling to believe that a civilized
foe could be guilty of an act so cruel and savage.

Now, I have reason to believe, written depositions testi-
fying to the fact of the discovery of the body are in possession
of British Headquarters Staff.

The unfortunate victim was a sergeant. As the story
was told to me, he was found transfixed to the wooden fence
of a farm building. Bayonets were thrust through the palms
of his hands and his feet, pinning him to the fence. He had
been repeatedly stabbed with bayonets, and there were many
punctured wounds in his body.

92 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

I have not heard that any of our men actually saw the
crime committed. There is room for the supposition that
the man was dead before he was pinned to the fence and
that the enemy, in his insensate rage and hate of the English,
wreaked his vengeance on the lifeless body of his foe.

That is the most charitable complexion that can be put
on the deed, ghastly as it is.

There is not a man in the ranks of the Canadians who
fought at Ypres who is not firmly convinced that this vile
thing has been done. They know, too, that the enemy
bayoneted their wounded and helpless comrades in the
trenches.

“ The Times,” May 15, 1915. Correspondent, North France.

Mr. Houston asked the Under-Secretary of State for War
whether he has any information regarding the crucifixion
of three Canadian soldiers recently captured by the Germans,
who nailed them with bayonets to the side of a wooden
structure.

Mr. TENNANT: No, sit; no information of such an atrocity
having been perpetrated has yet reached the War Office.

Mr. Houston: Is the Right Hon. Gentleman aware that
Canadian officers and Canadian soldiers who were eye-
witnesses of these fiendish outrages have made affidavits ?
Has the officer in command at the base at Boulogne not
called the attention of the War Office to them ?

Mr. Harcourt: No, sir; we have no record of it.

House of Commons, May 12, 1915.

Mr. Housron asked the Under-Secretary of State for
War whether he has any official information showing that
during the recent fighting, when the Canadians were tempo-
rarily driven back, they were compelled to leave about
forty of their wounded comrades in a barn, and that on
recapturing the position they found the Germans had
bayoneted all the wounded with the exception of a sergeant,
and that the Germans had removed the figure of Christ
from the large village crucifix and fastened the sergeant,
while alive, to the cross; and whether he is aware that the
crucifixion of our soldiers is becoming a practice of Germans.

Mr. TENNANT: The military authorities in France have

THE CRUCIFIED CANADIAN 93

standing instructions to send particulars of any authenticated
cases of atrocities committed against our troops by the
Germans. No official information in the sense of the Hon.
Member’s question has been received, but, owing to the
information conveyed by the Hon. Member’s previous
question, inquiry is being made and is not yet complete.
House of Commons, May 19, 1915.

The story went the round of the Press here and in
Canada, and was used by Members of Parliament on
the platform. Its authenticity, however, was eventually
denied by General March at Washington.

It cropped up again in 1919, when a letter was
published by the Nation (April 12th) from Private
E. Loader, znd Royal West Kent Regiment, who
declared he had seen the crucified Canadian. The
Nation was informed in a subsequent letter from
Captain E. N. Bennett that there was no such private
on the rolls of the Royal West Kents, and that the
znd Battalion was in India during the whole war.

* For the American version see p. 184.

XIV
THE SHOOTING OF THE FRANZOSLING

Turs is one of the lies which arose from a mistranslation.
On September 30, 1914, a communication was issued
by the Press Bureau, which was published by The Times
the following day. It was said to be a copy of the
Kriegschronik ‘‘ seized by the Custom House authorities
at ports of landing.” The extract given was as follows :

A traitor has just been shot (in the Vosges), a little French
lad (ein Franzésling) belonging to one of those gymnastic
societies which wear tricolour ribbons (i.e. the Eclaireurs, or
Boy Scouts), a poor young fellow who, in his infatuation,
wanted to be a hero. The German column was passing
along a wooded defile, and he was caught and asked whether
the French were about. He refused to give information.
Fifty yards further on there was fire from the cover of a
wood. ‘The prisoner was asked in French if he had known
that the enemy was in the forest, and did not deny it. He
went with a firm step to a telegraph post and stood up
against it, with the green vineyard at his back, and received
the volley of the firing party with a proud smile on his face.
Infatuated wretch! It was a pity to see such wasted courage.

Mr. J. A. Hobson wrote, in The Times of October 5,
1914, to point out an inaccuracy in the account of German
atrocities issued by the Press Bureau and published by
The Times.

The passage describes how “a little French lad (ein
Franzésling)”’ was shot for refusing to disclose the
proximity of some French soldiers. The word “ Fran-
zosling,“ Mr. Hobson wrote, “does not mean a little

THE SHOOTING OF THE FRANZOSLING 95

French boy,” but is “used exclusively to describe
German subjects with French proclivities. In Alsace
and Lorraine there exist societies of these Franzéslings,
who wear the French colours. They are not boys but
grown men.”

** Constant Reader ” wrote to The Times on October 6,
1914:

You publish on page 6 of your issue of this morning a
note communicated by a Mr. J. A. Hobson, which insinuates
that the young victim of a German firing party in the
Vosges, whose fate was described in a German soldier’s
letter printed last week, may have been a “ grown man”
and not a “lad.” At least, Mr. Hobson says that “‘ The
societies of these Franzéslings who wear the French colours
are not boys but grown men.” But he has evidently not
seen the original letter, which calls the victim an armer
junger Kerl—a poor lad; and a junger Verrater—a young
traitor. Moreover, it is clear that if this had been a grown
man of military age, he would have been doing military
service and not have been at large upon the roads.

This letter must have been from the Press Bureau,
as The Times original note made no reference to its
being from a German soldier’s letter, nor quoted the
German text. ‘“‘ Constant Reader” had evidently been
reading elsewhere.

Mr. J. A. Hobson wrote to The Times on October 8,
1914:

In reply to “ Constant Reader,” may I point out that the
object of my note upon the “ Franzésling ” incident was to
state that the word meant a “ pro-French German” and
not, as translated by the Press Bureau, “a little French
lad”? That he was “a young fellow” is not in dispute,

but that affords no justification for calling him a “ Boy
Scout.”

It does not seem to have been pointed out that no

96 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

body of Boy Scouts called Eclaireurs, and wearing
tricolour ribbons, could have existed in German Alsace.

The Press Bureau tells us that an official paper circulated
among the German troops chuckled with satisfaction at the
killing of a French boy who refused to divulge to the enemy
the whereabouts of French forces.

“ Daily Express,” October, 1914.

The Press Bureau story headed “ Little French Hero”
was printed in the same issue. The whole object of
the Press Bureau was to incense public opinion against
the Germans for shooting a boy. The shooting of spies
was not condemned, as The Times itself reported also
from the Vosges that

Germans caught red-handed in acts of espionage were court-
marshalled. Among others were the mayor and postmaster
of Thann, who were shot.

People may be further mystified in looking up this
case by finding it in The Times index under the heading
“ Shooting of Franz Osling.”

XV
LITTLE ALF’S STAMP COLLECTION

A CLERGYMAN, while lunching in a restaurant in 1918,
was informed by a stranger that the son of a friend of
his was interned in a camp in Germany. A recent
letter, he said, had contained the passage, “‘ The stamp
on this letter is a rare one; soak it off for little Alf’s
collection.” Though there was no one in the family
called Alf, and no one who collected stamps, they did
as they were told. Underneath the stamp were the
words, “‘ They have torn out my tongue; I could not
put it in the letter” (the news presumably, not the
tongue). The clergyman told the man the story was
absurd, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself for
repeating it, as everyone knew that prisoners’ letters did
not bear stamps. If his friend had managed to put a
stamp on his letter, it was the best possible way of
attracting attention to what he was trying to hide. But
the stranger, no doubt from patriotic motives, indignantly
refused to have his story spoiled, and it was widely
circulated in Manchester.

The interesting point about this lie is that it was also
used in Germany with variations. A lady in Munich
received a letter from her son, who was a prisoner in
Russia. He told her to take the stamp off his letter
“‘as it was a rare one.” She did so, and discovered
written underneath, ‘‘ They have cut off both my feet, so
that I cannot escape.” The story was eventually killed

« ** Artifex,” in the Manchester Guardian.
G

98 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

by ridicule, but not before it had travelled to Augsburg
and other towns.

It was probably one of the stories which are used in
every wat.

XVI
THE TATTOOED MAN

Towarps the end of 1918 a statement was circulated,
supported by photographs, that English prisoners had
been tattooed with the German Eagle, a cobra, or other
devices on their faces. The interesting feature in this
lie is that it seems to have emanated from quite a
number of different individuals, each one eager to
embroider some entirely unsubstantiated rumour which
had spread.

TATTOOING CHARGES NOT CONFIRMED.

On December 7th a statement appeared in the Press that
a ship’s fireman named Burton Mayberry had arrived at
Newcastle bearing on his cheeks tattoo marks representing
heads of cobras, which he alleged had been inflicted by two
sailors by order of a German submarine commander in
mid-Atlantic, on the occasion of the torpedoing of May-
berry’s ship in April 1917. Pictures of Mayberry, showing
the head of a cobra on each cheek, have also appeared in
various illustrated papers.

The matter has been investigated, and it has been ascer-
tained that on November 13th Mayberry applied for registra-
tion as a seaman preparatory to offering himself for employ-
ment in the British mercantile marine, and that, in making
his application, he stated that he had had no previous sea
service. He has now disappeared, and it seems that his
disappearance took place after receiving a request to attend
in order to receive his registration certificate. Former
associates of Mayberry state that he never made any allusion
to the alleged outrage.

Frequent statements have recently appeared in the Press
with regard to the alleged branding of British soldiers by

100 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

the Germans, but the responsible authorities have been
unable to obtain any confirmation of these allegations.
“< The Times,’ December 23, 1918.

The following extract from the Manchester Guardian
and the statement of “ Artifex” (the pseudonym of a
well-known Manchester ecclesiastic) give other versions
of the story more fully.

Our contributor “ Artifex” ventured to suggest last
week that the story of the prisoner who had been tattooed
on the cheek by the Germans, which had gained through a
section of the Press a wide currency among simple people,
was not established by any credible evidence. He tells us
to-day that he has since been deluged with letters enclosing
accounts of just how the man was tattooed, and giving
details of his former history and of his present occupation
and domestic relations. Each of the correspondents who
sent these letters was no doubt confirmed, by the cutting he
sent, in his belief in the truth of the tale and in the wilful
blindness of “ Artifex.” Unfortunately for their authors,
the stories vary so profoundly in essential facts as to make
it clear to anyone who correlates them, as “ Artifex ” has
done, that they are born of a myth, rapidly spread, and
gathering variety as it goes. If that were not enough,
there is yet more irrefutable evidence. The camera, it is
said, cannot lie. Yet on December 9th two different news-
papers published photographs of the victim. Each picture
represents his whole right profile. The one shows his
cheek marked with a full-length snake, in black, the other
decorates it with a snake’s head in outline. But a tattoo is
a permanent mark which years cannot alter or deface. Any
jury confronted with these conflicting pictures would be
forced to agree that the disfigurement was daily reapplied
by the sufferer, and that he had omitted the precaution of
having the same device repeated. Now this story must
have added vastly to the anxieties of many families who
have prisoners in enemy hands. Early in the war the
authorities did not hesitate to recommend the suppression
of the many reports of chivalrous treatment of our soldiers

THE TATTOOED MAN 101

by the Turks. That, in the light of the Turkish Govern-
ment’s record as a whole, may have been reasonable. But
we suggest that they should be at least not less active to
prevent the spread of stories about the treatment of our
prisoners which are as dubious as this one.

“* Manchester Guardian,” December 19, 1918.

Extract from ‘‘ Artifex ’? comments :

Not indeed that I ought to complain, in this case, of lack
of corroborative evidence. I have been assured that the
man, while working in a dockyard on the Tyne, has also
(1) undergone skin-grafting in Salford Royal Hospital,
(z) gone mad with horror in Leaf Square Hospital, (3) caused
by his awful appearance the premature confinement and
death of his young wife at Levenshulme, (4) thrown his
delicate twelve-year-old daughter into fits at Stockport,
(5) lived for nine months in a house in Weaste without ever
coming out except after dark, which is why none of the
neighbours have ever seen him, and (6) resided for the
whole time also at Gorton, Swinton, Pendlebury and
Tyldesley.

XVII
THE CORPSE FACTORY

A SERIES of extracts will give the record of one of the
most revolting lies invented during the war, the dis-
semination of which throughout not only this country
but the world was encouraged and connived at by both
the Government and the Press. It started in 1917, and
was not finally disposed of till 1925.

(Most of the quotations given are from The Times.
The references in the lower strata of the Press, it will
be remembered, were far more lurid.)

One of the United States consuls, on leaving Germany in
February 1917, stated in Switzerland that the Germans were
distilling glycerine from the bodies of their dead.

“ The Times,” April 16, 1917.

Herr Karl Rosner, the Correspondent of the Berlin
Lokalanzeiger, on the Western front ... published last
Tuesday the first definite German admission concerning the
way in which the Germans use dead bodies.

We pass through Everingcourt. There is a dull smell in
the air as if lime were being burnt. We are passing the
great Corpse Exploitation Establishment (Kadaververwertungs-
anstalt) of this Army Group. The fat that is won here is
turned into lubricating oils, and everything else is ground
down in the bone mill into a powder which is used for
mixing with pig’s food and as manure—nothing can be
permitted to go to waste.

“* The Times,” April 16, 1917.

There was a report in The Times of April 17, 1917,
from La Belgique (Leyden), via /’Indépendance Belge, for
April 10, giving a very long and detailed account of a

THE CORPSE FACTORY 103

Deutsche Abfallverwertungs-gesellschaft factory near
Coblenz, where train-loads of the stripped bodies of
German soldiers, wired into bundles, arrive and are
simmered down in cauldrons, the products being
stearine and refined oil.

In The Times of April 18, 1917, there was a letter
from C. E. Bunbury commenting and suggesting the
use of the story for propaganda purposes, in neutral
countries and the East, where it would be especially
calculated to horrify Buddhists, Hindus, and Moham-
medans. He suggested broadcasting by the Foreign
Office, India Office, and Colonial Office; there were
other letters to the same effect on April 19th.

In The Times of April 20, 1917, there was a story told
by Sergeant B——, of the Kents, that a prisoner had
told him that the Germans boil down their dead for
munitions and pig and poultry food. “ This fellow
told me that Fritz calls his margarine ‘corpse fat’
because they suspect that’s what it comes from.”

The Times stated that it had received a number of
letters ‘‘ questioning the translation of the German
word Kadaver, and suggesting that it is not used of
human bodies. As to this, the best authorities are
agreed that it is also used of the bodies of animals.”
Other letters were received confirming the story from
Belgian and Dutch sources (later from Roumania).

There was an article in the Lancet discussing the
“business aspect”? (or rather the technical one) of
the industry. An expression of horror appeared from
the Chinese Minister in London, and also from the
Maharajah of Bikanir, in The Times of April 21, 1917.

The Times of April 23, 1917, quotes a German state-
ment that the report is ‘‘ loathsome and ridiculous,”
and that Kadaver is never used of a human body. The

104 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Times produces dictionary quotations to show that it is.
Also that both Tierkorpermeh] and Kadavermehl appear in
German official catalogues, the implication being that
they must be something different.

In The Times of April 24, 1917, there was a letter,
signed E. H. Parker, enclosing copy of the North China
Herald, March 3, 1917, recounting an interview between
the German Minister and the Chinese Premier in Pekin :

But the matter was clinched when Admiral von Hinke
was dilating upon the ingenious methods by which German
scientists were obtaining chemicals necessary for the manu-
facture of munitions. The admiral triumphantly stated that
they were extracting glycerine out of their dead soldiers !
From that moment onward the horrified Premier had no
more use for Germany, and the business of persuading him
to turn against her became comparatively easy.

The following questions in Parliament show the
Government evading the issue, although they knew
there was not a particle of authentic evidence for the
report—a good instance of the official method of
spreading falsehood.

Mr. Ronatp McNertx asked the Prime Minister if he
will take steps to make it known as widely as possible in
Egypt, India, and the East generally, that the Germans use
the dead bodies of their own soldiers and of their enemies
when they obtain possession of them, as food for swine.

Mr. Ditton asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer
whether his attention has been called to the reports widely
circulated in this country that the German Government
have set up factories for extracting fat from the bodies of
soldiers killed in battle; whether these reports have been
endorsed by many prominent men in this country, including
Lord Curzon of Kedleston; whether the Government have
any solid grounds for believing that these statements are
well-founded; and if so, whether he will communicate the

THE CORPSE FACTORY 105

information at the disposal of the Government to the
House.

Lorp R. Cecit: With respect to this question and that
standing in the name of the Hon. Member for East Mayo,
the Government have no information at present beyond
that contained in extracts from the German Press which
have been published in the Press here. In view of other
actions by German military authorities, there is nothing
incredible in the present charge against them. His Majesty’s
Government have allowed the circulation of facts as they
have appeared through the usual channels.

Mr. McNett: Can the Right Hon. Gentleman answer
whether the Government will take any steps to give wide
publicity in the East to this story emanating from German
sources ?

Lorp R. Cecii: I think at present it is not desirable to
take any other steps than those that have been taken.

Mr. Ditton: May I ask whether we are to conclude
from that answer that the Government have no solid
evidence whatever in proof of the truth of this charge,
and they have taken no steps to investigate it; and has
their attention been turned to the fact that it is not only a
gross scandal, but a very great evil to this country to allow
the circulation of such statements, authorized by Ministers of
the Crown, if they are, as I believe them to be, absolutely
false ?

Lorp R. Ceci: The Hon. Member has, perhaps, informa-
tion that we have not. I can only speak from statements
that have been published in the Press. I have already told
the House that we have no other information whatever.
The information is the statement that has been published
and that I have before me (quoting Times quotation from
Lokalanzeiger). ‘This statement has been published in the
Press, and that is the whole of the information that I have.

Mr. Ditton: Has the Noble Lord’s attention been drawn
to the fact that there have been published in the Frankfurter
Zeitung and other leading German newspapers descriptions of
this whole process, in which the word Kadaver is used, and
from which it is perfectly manifest that these factories are
for the purpose of boiling down the dead bodies of horses
and other animals which are lying on the battlefield—(an

106 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Hon. MemBerR: ‘“‘ Human animals!”)—and I ask the
Right Hon. Gentleman whether the Government propose
to take any steps to obtain authentic information whether
this story that has been circulated is true or absolutely
false. For the credit of human nature, he ought to.

Lorp R. Ceci: It is not any part of the duties of the
Government, nor is it possible for the Government, to
institute inquiries as to what goes on in Germany. The
Hon. Member is surely very unreasonable in making the
suggestion, and as for his quotations from the Frankfurter
Zeitung, I have not seen them, but I have seen statements
made by the German Government after the publication of
this, and I confess that I am not able to attach very great
importance to any statements made by the German
Government.

Mr. Ditton: I beg to ask the Right Hon. Gentleman
whether, before a Minister of the Crown, a member of the
War Cabinet, gives authorization to these rumours, he
ought not to have obtained accurate information as to
whether they are true or not.

Lorp R. Cecii: I think any Minister of the Crown is
entitled to comment on and refer to something which has
been published in one of the leading papers of the country.
He only purported to do that, and did not make himself
responsible for the statement (an Hon. Member: “ He
did!”’). I am informed that he did not. He said: “ As
has been stated in the papers.”

Mr. OurHwalTE: May I ask if the Noble Lord is aware
that the circulation of these reports (interruption) has caused
anxiety and misery to British people who have lost their
sons on the battlefield, and who think that their bodies
may be put to this purpose, and does not that give a reason
why he should try to find out the truth of what is happening
in Germany ?

House of Commons, April 30, 1917.

In The Times of May 3, 1917, there were quotations
from the Frankfurter Zeitung stating that the French
Press is now treating the Kadaver story as a “ mis-
understanding.”

THE CORPSE FACTORY 107

The Times of May 17, 1917, teported that Herr
Zimmermann denied in the Reichstag that human
bodies were used; and stated that the story appeared
first in the French Press.

In reply to a question in the House of Commons on
May 23rd, Mr. A. Chamberlain stated that the report
would be “ available to the public in India through the
usual channels.”

A corpse factory cartoon appeared in Punch.

KAlIsER (to 1917 recruit): And don’t forget that your
Kaiser will find a use for you alive or dead. (At the enemy’s
establishment for the utilization of corpses the dead bodies
of German soldiers are treated chemically, the chief com-
mercial products being lubricant oils and pig food.)

View of the corpse factory out of the window.

The story had a world-wide circulation and had con-
siderable propaganda value in the East. Not till 1925
did the truth emerge.

A painful impression has been produced here by an
unfortunate speech of Brigadier-General Charteris at the
dinner of the National Arts Club, in which he professed to
tell the true story of the war-time report that Germany was
boiling down the bodies of her dead soldiers in order to get
fats for munitions and fertilizers.

According to General Charteris, the story began as pro-
paganda for China. By transposing the caption from one
of two photographs found on German prisoners to the
other he gave the impression that the Germans were
making a dreadful use of their own dead soldiers. This
photograph he sent to a Chinese newspaper in Shanghai.
He told the familiar story of its later republication in England
and of the discussion it created there. He told, too, how,
when a question put in the House was referred to him, he
answered it by saying that from what he knew of German
mentality, he was prepared for anything.

108 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Later, said General Charteris, in order to support the
story, what purported to be the diary of a German soldier
was forged in his office. It was planned to have this dis-
covered on a dead German by a war correspondent with a
passion for German diaries, but the plan was never carried
out. The diary was now in the war museum in London.

“The Times,’ October 22, 1925. From New York

Correspondent.

Some opinions of politicians may be given.

Lioyp GrEorGE: The story came under my notice in
various ways at the time. I did not believe it then; I do
not believe it now. It was never adopted as part of the
armoury of the British Propaganda Department. It was, in
fact, “‘ turned down ” by that department.

Mr. MASTERMAN: We certainly did not accept the story
as true, and I know nobody in official positions at the time
who credited it. Nothing as suspect as this was made use
of in our propaganda. Only such information as had been
properly verified was circulated.

Mr. I. MAcPHERSON: I was at the War Office at the
time. We had no reason to doubt the authenticity of
the story when it came through. It was supported by the
captured divisional orders of the German Army in France,
and I have an impression it was also backed up by the
Foreign Office on the strength of extracts from the German
Press. We did not know that it had been invented by any-
body, and had we known there was the slightest doubt about
the truth of the story, it would not have been used in any
way by us.

A New York correspondent describes how he rang
General Charteris up, and inquired the truth of the
report and suggested that, if untrue, he should take it
up with the New York Times.

THE CORPSE FACTORY 109

On this he protested vigorously that he could not think
of challenging the report, as the mistakes were only of minor
importance.

“ Daily News,” November 5, 1925.

There was a Times article on the same subject quoting
the New York Times? assertion of the truth of their
version of the speech.

This paper makes the significant observation that in the
course of his denial he offered no comment on his reported
admission that he avoided telling the truth when questioned
about the matter in the House of Commons, or on his own
description of a scheme to support the Corpse Factory story
by “planting” a forged diary in the clothing of a dead
German prisoner—a proposal which he only abandoned lest
the deception might be discovered.

Brigadier-General Charteris, who returned from America
at the week-end, visited the War Office yesterday and had
an interview with the Secretary of State for War (Sir Laming
Worthington-Evans) concerning the reports of his speech on
war propaganda in New York. It is understood that the
War Office now regard the incident as closed and that no
further inquiry is likely to be held.

General Charteris left for Scotland later in the day, and
on arrival in Glasgow issued the following statement :

“On arrival in Scotland I was surprised to find that, in
spite of the repudiation issued by me at New York through
Reuter’s agency, some public interest was still excited in the
entirely incorrect report of my remarks at a private dinner in
New York. I feel it necessary therefore to give again a
categorical denial to the statement attributed to me. Certain
suggestions and speculations as regards the origins of the
Kadaver story, which have already been published in These
Eventful Years (British Encyclopedia Press) and elsewhere,
which I repeated, are, doubtless unintentionally, but never-
theless unfortunately, turned into definite statements of fact
and attributed to me.

** Lest there should still be any doubt, let me say that I
neither invented the Kadaver story nor did I alter the captions

110 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

in any photographs, nor did I use faked material for pro-
paganda purposes. The allegations that I did so are not
only incorrect but absurd, as propaganda was in no way
under G.H.Q. France, where I had charge of the Intelli-
gence Services. I should be as interested as the general
public to know what was the true origin of the Kadaver
story. G.H.Q. France only came in when a fictitious
diary supporting the Kadaver story was submitted. When
this diary was discovered to be fictitious, it was at once
rejected.

**T have seen the Secretary of State this morning and have
explained the whole circumstances to him, and have his
authority to say that he is perfectly satisfied.”

* The Times,’ November 4, 1925.

LrEut.-COMMANDER KENwortTHY asked the Secretary of
State for War if, in view of the feeling aroused in Germany
by the recrudescence of the rumours of the so-called corpse
conversion factory behind the German lines in the late war,
he can give any information as to the source of the original
rumour and the extent to which it was accepted by the War
Office at the time.

Sir L. WorrHincTon-Evans: At this distance of time I
do not think that the source of the rumour can be traced
with any certainty. The statement that the Germans had
set up a factory for the conversion of dead bodies first
appeared on April 10, 1917, in the Lokalanzeiger, published
in Berlin, and in /’Indépendance Belge and La Belgique, two
Belgian newspapers published in France and Holland.
The statements were reproduced in the Press here, with the
comment that it was the first German admission con-
cerning the way in which the Germans used their dead
bodies.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons on
April 30, 1917, and the Under-Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs replied on behalf of the Government that
he had then no information beyond that contained in the
extract from the German Press. But shortly afterwards a
German Army Order containing instructions for the delivery
of dead bodies to the establishments described in the
Lokalanzeiger was captured in France and forwarded to the

THE CORPSE FACTORY 111

War Office, who, after careful consideration, permitted it to
be published.

The terms of this order were such that, taken in con-
junction with the articles in the Lokalanzeiger and in the
two Belgian papers and the previously existing rumours,
it appeared to the War Office to afford corroborative
evidence of the story. Evidence that the word Kadaver was
used to mean human bodies, and not only carcasses of
animals, was found in German dictionaries and anatomical
and other works, and the German assertion that the story
was disposed of by reference to the meaning of the word
Kadaver was not accepted. On the information before them
at the time, the War Office appear to have seen no reason
to disbelieve the truth of the story.

Ligzur.-COMMANDER KENWwoRTHY: I am much obliged
to the Right Hon. Gentleman for his very full answer.
Does he not think it desirable now that the War Office
should finally disavow the story and their present belief
in it ?

Stir L. WorrHincron-Evans: I cannot believe any
public interest is served by further questions on this story.
I have given the House the fullest information in my pos-
session in the hope that the Hon. Members will be satisfied
with what I have said. (Hon. Mempers: Hear, hear.)

LizutT.-COMMANDER KENWoRTHY: Does not the Right
Hon. Gentleman think it desirable, even now, to finally
admit the inaccuracy of the original story, in view of Locarno
and other things ?

Sir L. WorrHincton-Evans: It is not a question of
whether it was accurate or inaccurate. What I was con-
cerned with was the information upon which the War
Office acted at the time. Of course, the fact that there has
been no corroboration since necessarily alters the complexion
of the case, but I was dealing with the information in the
possession of the authorities at the time.

House of Commons, November 24, 1925.

This was a continued attempt to avoid making a
complete denial, and it was left to Sir Austen Chamber-
lain to nail the lie finally to the counter. In reply to

112 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Mr. Arthur Henderson on December 2, 1925, asking if
he had any statement to make as to the Kadaver story,
he said :

Yes, sir; my Right Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for
War told the House last week how the story reached His
Majesty’s Government in 1917. The Chancellor of the
German Reich has authorized me to say, on the authority
of the German Government, that there was never any
foundation for it. I need scarcely add that on behalf of
His Majesty’s Government I accept this denial, and I trust
that this false report will not again be revived.

The painful impression made by this episode and
similar propaganda efforts in America is well illustrated
by an editorial in Times-Dispatch, of Richmond, U.S.A.,
on December 6, 1925.

Not the least of the horrors of modern warfare is the
propaganda bureau, which is an important item in the military
establishment of every nation. Neither is it the least of the
many encouraging signs which each year add to the prob-
ability of eventual peace on earth. The famous Kadaver
story, which aroused hatred against the German to the boiling-
point in this and other Allied nations during the war, has
been denounced as a lie in the British House of Commons.
Months ago the world learned the details of how this lie was
planned and broadcasted by the efficient officer in the British
Intelligence Service. Now we are told that, imbued with the
spirit of the Locarno pact, Sir Austen Chamberlain rose in
the House, said that the German Chancellor had denied the
truth of the story, and that the denial had been accepted by
the British Government.

A few years ago the story of how the Kaiser was reducing
human corpses to fat aroused the citizens of this and other
enlightened nations to a fury of hatred. Normally sane
men doubled their fists and rushed off to the nearest recruiting
sergeant. Now they are being told, in effect, that they
were dupes and fools; that their own officers deliberately
goaded them to the desired boiling-point, using an infamous

THE CORPSE FACTORY 113

lie to arouse them, just as a grown bully whispers to one
little boy that another little boy said he could lick him.

The encouraging sign found in this revolting admission
of how modern war is waged is the natural inference that
the modern man is not over-eager to throw himself at his
brother’s throat at the simple word of command. His
passions must be played upon, so the propaganda bureau
has taken its place as one of the chief weapons.

In the next war, the propaganda must be more subtle
and clever than the best the World War produced. These
frank admissions of wholesale lying on the part of trusted
Governments in the last war will not soon be forgotten.

XVIII
THE BISHOP OF ZANZIBAR’S LETTER

THERE are two things which cannot be permitted
during war. Firstly, favourable comment on the
enemy—instances of this have been given in the
Introduction. Secondly, criticism of the country to
which you belong cannot be publicly expressed. Sup-
pression of opinion of this kind is all very well, but the
deliberate distortion of it is a peculiarly malicious form
of falsehood.

The late Dr. Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, a great
champion of the African natives, wrote an open letter
to General Smuts, in which he said :

It is political madness at this time of day to try and subject
a weaker people to serfdom, or to slavery. . . . It is moral
madness. . . . Thirdly, it is so definitely an anti-Christian
policy that no one who adopts it can any longer justify the
Gospel of Christ to the African peoples. ...

In a pamphlet quoted in the Church Times, October 8,
1920, the Bishop of Zanzibar wrote :

When I wrote my open letter to General Smuts I called
it “‘ Great Britain’s Scrap of Paper: Wéill She Honour It ?”
I was alluding to her promise of justice to the weaker
peoples. The Imperial Government took my letter, cut
but some inconvenient passages, and published it under
the title, “The Black Slaves of Prussia.” I suggest that
East Africans have now become the “Black Serfs of Great
Britain.”

In the Life of the Bishop of Zanzibar, published in

THE BISHOP OF ZANZIBAR’S LETTER 115

1926, the letter appears in its garbled form as the
Bishop’s opinion of the German treatment of their
** black slaves.”

This is a good instance of a quite deliberate per-
version by the Government and also an instance of
how difficult it is for the truth, even when published,
to overtake a lie and to reach the people most concerned.

XIX
THE GERMAN U-BOAT OUTRAGE

A MoNnsTROUS story of fiendish cruelty on the part of a
German U-boat commander was circulated in the Press
in July 1918. It is an instance of how people in posi-
tions of semi-official authority were either ready delibe-
rately to invent or to elaborate some vague rumour and
give it the stamp of authentic information.

It appeared in more or less the same form in all the
newspapers :

Staff-Paymaster Collingwood Hughes, R.N.V.R., of the
Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, lecturing
yesterday at the Royal Club, St. James’s Square, said that
one of our patrol boats in the Atlantic found a derelict
U-boat. After rescuing the crew our commander inquired
of the Hun captain if all were safely aboard, as it was intended
to blow up the U-boat.

“Yes,” came the reply, “they are here. Call the roll.”
Every German answered. The British commander was
about to push off before dropping a depth charge, when
tapping was heard.

“Are you quite sure there is no one on board your
boat ? ” he repeated.

“ Yes,” declared the Hun captain.

But the tapping continued, and the British officer ordered
a search of the U-boat. There were found in it, tied up as
prisoners, four British seamen. ‘The rescued Germans were
going to allow their prisoners to be drowned.

“ Daily Mail,” July 12, 1918.

The story was repeated by Commander Sir Edward
Nicholl at a public meeting at Colston Hall, in Bristol,

THE GERMAN U-BOAT OUTRAGE 117

at which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty
was present.

CoLoneL WepGwoop asked the First Lord of the Admiralty
whether one of our patrol boats recently rescued the crew
of a derelict U-boat, the captain of which deliberately left
on board four British seamen, who would have been drowned
if they had not been heard knocking and been rescued ;
and if this is so, what steps have been taken to deal with
the captain of the U-boat.

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY
(Dr. Macnamara): The Admiralty have officially stated in
the public Press that they have no knowledge of this reported
incident and that the statement was made without their
authority.

CoLoNEL WeEDGwoop: Are we to understand that this
statement is absolutely without any basis of fact and is, in
fact, a lie ?

Dr. MACNAMARA: We have stated that we have no
information in confirmation of the statement which was
made.

House of Commons, July 15, 1918.

In reply to subsequent questions Dr. Macnamara
stated he was getting into communication with the
officer responsible for the statement.

CotoneL WeEpGwoop asked the First Lord of the
Admiralty whether the story about the derelict U-boat has
yet been reported on, and, if so, what conclusion has been
come to; and whether the story was first told by a naval
officer at a meeting at the Colston Hall about five weeks
ago, at which the Parliamentary Secretary himself was
present.

Dr. MACNAMARA: We have endeavoured to trace this
story to its origin. Fleet-Paymaster Collingwood Hughes
appears to have heard it from more than one source. He
should certainly have taken the opportunity afforded him in
his official position to verify it. In our opinion the story is
without foundation. As regards the second part of the

118 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

question, Commander Sir Edward Nicholl, Royal Naval
Reserve, certainly told the story in the course of a speech
at a meeting at Bristol, at which I was present. I learn
from him that he was present at an earlier meeting addressed
by Mr. Collingwood Hughes in South Wales and heard the
story recited by him on that occasion.

House of Commons, July 23, 1918.

But, of course, in this, as in other cases, for one
person who noticed the denial there were a thousand
who only heard the lie.

XX
CONSTANTINOPLE

THE evasions and concealments necessitated by the
existence of the Secret Treaties cover too large a ground
to be dealt with here. Evasion is a more insidious
form of falsehood than the deliberate lie. One point,
however, which was of considerable interest to the
people of Great Britain may serve as an illustration. It
concerned the fate of Constantinople.

Asked in the House of Commons on May 30, 1916,
whether Professor Miliukoff’s statement in the Duma
was correct, that “our supreme aim in this war is to
get possession of Constantinople, which must belong to
Russia entirely and without reserve,” Sir Edward Grey
replied that “‘it is mot necessary or desirable to make
official comments on unofficial statements,” and being
further pressed, added, ‘“‘ The Honourable Member is
asking for a statement which I do not think it desirable
to make.”

From the point of view of the Government, the
Foreign Secretary was quite right to evade the question.
In the first place we had not taken Constantinople,
and in the second place it must have appeared doubtful
to the Government whether the British soldiers and
sailors would be enthusiastic in sacrificing their lives
in order to give Constantinople to Russia, the strains of
the old jingo song of 1878 not having quite died away :

We’ve fought the Bear before, we can fight the Bear again,
But the Russians shall not have Constantinople.

120 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

But on March 7, 1915, a year before Sir E. Grey gave
this answer in Parliament, M. Sazonov had telegraphed
to the Russian Ambassador in London :

Will you please express to Grey the profound gratitude of
the Imperial Government for the complete and final assent
of Great Britain to the solution of the question of the Straits
and Constantinople in accordance with Russian desires.

On December 2, 1916, M. Trepoff declared in the
Duma :

An agreement, which we concluded in 1915 with Great
Britain and France and to which Italy has adhered, established
in the most definite fashion the right of Russia to the
Straits and Constantinople. . . . I repeat that absolute agree-
ment on this point is firmly established among the Allies.

On January 5, 1918 (National War Aims Pamphlet
No. 33), the Prime Minister declared that we were not
fighting “‘ to deprive Turkey of its capital.” He could
say this because the Russian Revolution had taken place.

By subterfuges and evasions the British Government
were anxious to screen the truth from the country,
because they knew how unpopular it would be.

XXI
THE “ LUSITANIA ”

TuHE sinking of the Lusitania was a hideous tragedy
and one of the most terrible examples of the barbarity
of modern warfare, but, from the point of view of
suffering and loss of life, was not to be compared with
many other episodes in the war. The very crucial
political significance of the catastrophe, however, gave
it special propaganda value in inflaming popular
indignation, specially in America. Here obviously was
the necessary lever at last to bring America into the
war. That Germany should not have recognized that
this would be the result of such action on her part was
one of the many illustrations of her total inability to
grasp the psychology of other peoples.

From the point of view of propaganda it was necessary
to show that the Germans had blown up a defenceless
passenger ship flying the American flag and bearing
only civilian passengers and an ordinary cargo. This
was represented as a breach of international law and an
act of piracy. The unsuccessful attempt to suppress
certain facts which emerged leads naturally to the con-
clusion that other attempts were successful. No inquiry,
such as the Mersey inquiry, conducted in war-time with
regard to the action of the enemy, can in such circum-
stances be regarded as conclusive.

The whole truth with regard to the sinking of the
Lusitania will probably never be cleared up. Four
points may be considered here:

122 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

(2) Whether she was armed.

(4) Whether she was carrying Canadian troops.

(¢) Whether she had munitions on board.

(2) Whether a medal was issued in Germany to
commemorate the sinking of the Lusitania.

(2) On this point there was a conflict of evidence.

The Lusitania was registered as an auxiliary cruiser.
The Germans declared she was carrying concealed guns.
This was categorically denied by the captain in the
inquiry. ‘“‘ She had no weapons of offence or defence
and no masked guns.” Lord Mersey therefore found
this charge to be untrue.

(b) The same may be said about the charge made by
the Germans that she was transporting Canadian troops.

(c) These two denials would be readily acceptable,
were it not for the fact that at first a denial and then a
suppression of the fact that she was carrying munitions
was attempted.

It is equally untrue that the Lusitania was carrying ammu-
nition on its final voyage.
Daily Express,” May 11, 1915.

In America there was a threat to expel Senator La
Follette from the Senate because he had stated that the
Lusitania carried munitions. But Mr. Dudley Field
Malone, collector at the port of New York, confirmed
this charge as true.

D. F. Malone revealed that the Lusitania carried large
quantities of ammunition consigned to the British Govern-
ment, including 4,200 cases of Springfield cartridges. The
Wilson administration refused to permit the publication of
the fact. One of the principal charges upon which the
attempt to expel R. M. La Follette from the Senate was
based was that he had falsely declared that the Lusitania

THE “ LUSITANIA ” 123

carried ammunition, and the prosecution of the Senator was
dropped when Mr. Malone offered to testify on his behalf.
“* The Nation” (New York), November 20, 1920.

It was eventually admitted that the Lusitania carried
5,400 cases of ammunition. The captain at the inquest
at Kinsale said: “‘ There was a second report, but that
might possibly have been an internal explosion.” The
foreman of the Queenstown jury protested that all the
victims were not drowned. ‘I have seen many of the
bodies, and the people were killed; they were blown to
pieces.”

The ship sank in eighteen minutes, which accounted
for the loss of so many lives. The Germans, in their
reply to the American note, referred to this point and
stated :

It is impossible to decide, for instance, the question
whether the necessary opportunity was given to the pas-
sengers and crew to escape, until it has been determined
whether or not the Lusitania provided bulkheads and boats
as ordered by the Titanic Conference for corresponding
emergencies in peace-time, and whether or not ammunition
or explosives carried in defiance of the American laws
accelerated the sinking of the ship, which might otherwise
have been expected either to get out the boats safely or
reach the coast.

Included in her cargo was a small consignment of rifle
ammunition and shrapnel shells weighing about 173 tons.
Warnings that the vessel would be sunk, afterwards traced
to the German Government, were circulated in New York
before she sailed.

“< The World Crisis,” by the Right Hon. Winston Churchill,

M.P.

(d) The event having been condemned as a barbarous
act of piracy, it became necessary to show that the
Germans gloried in it.

124 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

The first rumour was that a special medal had been
bestowed on the crew of the U-boat which sunk the
Lusitania as a reward for gallantry. This was dropped
when the medal turned out to be a commemoration
medal, not a decoration.

It was then stated that the German Government
had had a medal struck in commemoration of the event,
but after the armistice had it withdrawn from circula-
tion. In 1919 it was found in a shop in Berlin. In
1920 a traveller in Berlin, Frankfurt, and other parts of
Germany could find no one who had ever heard of it
or seen it, whereas in England the medals were well
known and very easily obtained. It turned out that
the medal was originally designed in Munich by a
man of the name of Goetz and represents the Lusitania
as carrying arms. Goetz may be described as a
cartoonist in metal; his work was not official, and his
Lusitania medal had a very limited circulation. Few
Germans appear to have heard of its existence. The
large number of casts of the medal, which gave the
impression here that they must be as common as pence
in Germany, was explained by Lord Newton, who was in
charge of propaganda at the Foreign Office in 1916.

I asked a West End store if they could undertake the
reproduction of it for propaganda purposes. They agreed
to do so, and the medals were sold all over the world in
neutral countries, especially in America and South America.
After some initial difficulty a great success was achieved. I
believe it to have been one of the best pieces of propaganda.

“ Evening Standard,” November 1, 1926.

The Honorary Secretary of the Lusitania Medal Com-
mittee stated that 250,000 of the medals were sold, and

the proceeds were given to the Red Cross and St.
Dunstan’s. Each medal was enclosed in a box on

THE “ LUSITANIA ” 125

which it was stated that the medals were replicas of
the medal distributed in Germany ‘‘ to commemorate
the sinking of the Lusitania.” But many of them in
England could be purchased without any box.

In addition to the medal, leaflets were circulated with
pictures of the medal. In one case in Sweden a sentence
was printed from the Kélmische Volkszeitung: “We
regard with joyous pride this newest exploit of our
fleet.”” This sentence had been torn from its context,
and had been originally used in quite another connection.

It therefore became clear that :

(1) No medal was given to the crew of the German
U-boat.

(2) No medal was struck in commemoration of the
event by the German Government.

(3) The German Government could not have with-
drawn a medal it never issued.

(4) A metal-worker in Munich designed the medal,
which was always rare in Germany.

(5) The large number of medals in circulation was
due to the reproduction of Goetz’s medal in
Great Britain.

The propaganda value of the medal was great, as
Lord Newton admitted. The impression it created was
absolutely and intentionally false.

XXII
REPORT OF A BROKEN-UP MEETING

THERE were official eavesdroppers, telephone-tappers,
letter-openers, etc., by the score. We are not concerned
with their activities here. But it may be imagined what
a large crop of spy stories and “‘ authentic” tales they
originated. An amusing instance may be given of an
official who was sent to attend and report on a meeting
of the Union of Democratic Control, held at the
Memorial Hall in November 1915. Major R. M.
Mackay (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) was
Assistant Provost-Marshal, and sent in a report, most
of which was read out in the House of Commons by
Mr. Tennant, Under-Secretary at the War Office, on
December 7th. Attention was called to the meeting,
because it was broken up by soldiers who had obtained
forged tickets. The Assistant Provost-Marshal’s report
was so fantastic that it almost appeared as if he could
not have been at the meeting at all. But, of course,
the evidence of such a high-placed official was accepted
as conclusive. He accused Mr. Ramsay MacDonald of
having provoked the soldiers by sending a message to
have some of them ejected. There was not a shred of
truth in this. He reported that someone “ whose name
I could not ascertain’ had used provocative language.
He described stewardesses ‘‘ who not only appeared to
be Teutonic but could be classified as such from their
accents,” whose remarks he overheard. Needless to
say, there was no Teuton or anyone with a Teutonic
accent in the building.

THE BROKEN-UP MEETING 127

On a subsequent occasion, when Mr. Tennant
attempted to explain away parts of the report he had
read out, the following comment appeared in the
Westminster Gazette :

Mr. Tennant explained that his answer, with its references
to stewardesses with “‘ Teutonic accents ” and its attribution
to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald of words which were never
used, was read hurriedly from a report made to him.
Ministers are compelled to depend on such reports, but the
language ought to be severely edited before it comes before
the House of Commons. If that precaution is neglected,
Ministers lay up for themselves an amount of irritation and
resentment which is wholly unnecessary.

In 1917 the reliable Provost-Marshal was accused of
wrongful arrest. In May 1918 he was charged with
“lending” soldiers as gardeners, etc., to his personal
friends, misuse of public money, etc. Some of the
many charges against him were dismissed, but later in
the same year it was announced that he was “‘ dismissed
the service by sentence of General Court Martial”
(London Gazette Supplement, August 12, 1918).

It came out in evidence that he had been deaf for years.

XXIII
ATROCITY STORIES

War is, in itself, an atrocity. Cruelty and suffering
are inherent in it. Deeds of violence and barbarity
occur, as everyone knows. Mankind is goaded by
authority to indulge every elemental animal passion.
But the exaggeration and invention of atrocities soon
becomes the main staple of propaganda. Stories of
German “ frightfulness ” in Belgium were circulated in
such numbers as to give ample proof of the abominable
cruelty of the German Army and so to infuriate popular
opinion against them. A Belgian commission was
appointed, and subsequently a commission, under the
chairmanship of Lord Bryce, who was chosen in order
that opinion in America, where he had been a very
popular ambassador, might be impressed. Affidavits of
single witnesses were accepted as conclusive proof.

At best, human testimony is unreliable, even in
ordinary occurrences of no consequence, but where
bias, sentiment, passion, and so-called patriotism disturb
the emotions, a personal affirmation becomes of no value
whatsoever.

To cover the whole ground on atrocity stories would
be impossible. They were circulated in leaflets, pam-
phlets, letters, and speeches day after day. Prominent
people of repute, who would have shrunk from con-
demning their bitterest personal enemy on the evidence,
or rather lack of evidence, they had before them, did not
hesitate to lead the way in charging a whole nation with
every conceivable brutality and unnatural crime. The

ATROCITY STORIES 129

Times issued ‘‘ Marching Songs,” written by a prominent
Eton master, in which such lines as these occurred :

He shot the wives and children,

The wives and little children ;

He shot the wives and children,
And laughed to see them die.

One or two instances of the proved falsity of state-
ments made by people under the stress of excitement
and indignation may be given.

It was reported that some thirty to thirty-five German
soldiers entered the house of David Tordens, a carter,
in Sempst; they bound him, and then five or six of
them assaulted and ravished in his presence his thirteen-
year-old daughter, and afterwards fixed her on bayonets.
After this horrible deed, they bayoneted his nine-year-old
boy and then shot his wife. His life was saved through
the timely arrival of Belgian soldiers. It was further
asserted that all the girls in Sempst were assaulted and
ravished by the Germans.

The secretary of the commune, Paul van Boeckpourt,
the mayor, Peter van Asbroeck, and his son Louis van
Asbroeck, in a sworn statement made on April 4, 1915,
at Sempst, declared that the name given to the carter,
David Tordens, was quite unknown to them; that
such a person did not live in Sempst before the war and
was quite unknown in the commune; that during the
war no woman or child under fourteen was killed in
Sempst, and if such an occurrence had taken place they
would certainly have heard of it.

Another report published was that at Ternath the
Germans met a boy and asked him the way to Thurt.
As the boy did not understand them, they chopped off
both his hands.

1 Quoted in Truth: ‘‘A Path to Justice and Reconciliation,” by
** Verax,”
I

130 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Statement by the Mayor of Ternath, Dr. Poodt, on
February 11, 1915:

“I declare there is not a word of truth in it. I have been
in Ternath since the beginning of the war, and it is impossible
that such an occurrence should not have been reported to
me; it is a pure invention.”

After the publication of the various reports, five
American war correspondents issued the following
declaration :

To let the truth be known, we unanimously declare the
stories of German cruelties, from what we have been able
to observe, were untrue. After having been with the German
Army for two weeks, and having accompanied the troops
for over one hundred miles, we are not able to report one
single case of undeserved punishment or measure of retribu-
tion. We areneither able to confirm any rumours as regards
maltreatment of prisoners and non-combatants. Having
been with the German troops through Landen, Brussels,
Nivelles, Buissiere, Haute-Wiherie, Merbes-le-Chateau, Sorle-
sur-Sambre, Beaumont, we have not the slightest basis for
making up a case of excess. We found numerous rumours
after investigation to be without foundation. German
soldiers paid everywhere for what they bought, and respected
private property and civil rights. We found Belgian women
and children after the battle of Buissiére to feel absolutely
safe. A citizen was shot in Merbes-le-Chateau, but nobody
could prove his innocence. Refugees, who told about
cruelties and brutalities, could bring absolutely no proof.
The discipline of the German soldiers is excellent; no
drunkenness. The Burgomaster of Sorle-sur-Sambre volun-
tarily disclaimed all rumours of cruelties in that district.

For the truth of the above we pledge our word of honour
as journalists.

(Signed) Roger Lewis, Associated Press; Irwin Cobb,
Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia Public Ledger, Phila-
delphia ; Harry Hansen, Chicago Daily News, Chicago ;
James O’Donnell Bennett, Chicago Tribune; John T.
McCutcheon, Chicago Tribune, Chicago.

ATROCITY STORIES 131

In the issue of the New York World of January 28,
1915, appeared the following dispatch :

Washington, January 27th.—Of the thousands of Belgian
refugees who are now in England, not one has been subjected
to atrocities by German soldiers. This, in effect, is the
substance of a report received at the State Department.
The report states that the British Government had investi-
gated thousands of reports to the effect that German soldiers
had perpetrated outrages on fleecing Belgians. During the
early period of the war columns of British newspapers were
filled with the accusation. Agents of the British Govern-
ment, according to the report of the American Embassy in
London, carefully investigated all these charges; they
interviewed the alleged victims and sifted all the evidence.
As a result of the investigation, the British Foreign Office
notified the American Embassy that the charges appeared
to be based upon hysteria and natural prejudice. The
report added that many of the Belgians had suffered hard-
ships, but they should be charged up against the exigence
of war rather than to brutality of the individual German
soldiers.

The following passage occurs in a review by the
New York Times Literary Supplement of March 19, 1918,
of ‘ Brave Belgians,” by Baron C. Buttin, to which
Baron de Brocqueville, the Belgian Minister of War,
contributed a preface commending its truth and fairness:

The work gives eye-witness accounts of the first three
months of the invasion of Belgium, and is made up of
reports told by various people who did their share in that
extraordinary resistance—colonels, majors, and army chap-
lains, lieutenants, etc. There is scarcely a hint of that
“‘ bugbear,” German atrocities, or the nameless or needless
horrors described in the report of the Bryce Commission.

An amazing instance of the way atrocity lies may
still remain fixed in some people’s minds, and how an

132 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

attempt may be made to propagate them even now,
is afforded by a letter which appeared as recently as
April 12, 1927, in the Evening Star, Dunedin, New
Zealand. The writer, Mr. Gordon Catto, answering
another correspondent on the subject of atrocities,
wrote :

My wife, who in 1914-15 was a nurse in the Ramsgate
General Hospital, England, actually nursed Belgian women
and children refugees who were the victims of Hun rapacity
and fiendishness, the women having had their breasts cut
off and the children with their hands hacked off at the
wrists.

Here was almost first-hand evidence noting both
time and place. An inquiry was accordingly addressed
by a lady investigator to the Secretary of the Ramsgate
General Hospital, and the following reply was received :

Ramsgate General Hospital, 4, Cannon Road, Ramsgate,

11. 6, 27.
Dear MApam,

I am at a loss to know how the information about
atrocities to women and children, committed by the German
soldiers, could have originated in respect to Ramsgate, as
there were no such cases received.

Yours faithfully,
(Signed) SypNey W. SMITH.

An instance of a man being genuinely misled by the
information given him, not having any desire himself
to propagate lies, can be given in the case of a Baptist
minister of Sheffield, who preached on atrocities. On
February 28, 1915, preaching in Wash Lane Baptist
Chapel, Letchford, Warrington, he told the congregation
that there was a Belgian girl in Sheffield, about twelve
years old, who had had her nose cut off and her stomach

ATROCITY STORIES 133

ripped open by the Germans, but she was still living and
getting better.

On inquiry being made as to whether he had made
this statement, he replied :

I have written to our Belgian Consul here for the name
and address of the girl whose case I quoted at Letchford.
If all I hear is true, it is far worse than I stated.

I am also asking for another similar instance, which I
shall be glad to transmit to you if, and as soon as, I can
secure the facts.

The Belgian Consul, in a letter of March 11th, wrote :

Although I have heard of a number of cases of Belgian
girls being maltreated in one way and another, I have on
investigation not found a particle of truth in one of them,
and I know of no girl in Sheffield who has had her nose cut
off and her stomach ripped open.

I have also investigated cases in other towns, but have not
yet succeeded in getting hold of any tangible confirmation.

The minister accordingly informed his correspondent :

I am writing a letter to my old church at Letchford to be
read on Sunday next, contradicting the story which I told
on what seemed to be unimpeachable authority. Iam glad
I did not give the whole alleged facts as they were given
to me.

With many thanks for your note and inquiry.

It is to be feared, however, that his first congregation,
satisfied with pulpit confirmation of the story, circulated
it beyond the reach of the subsequent denial.

Atrocity stories from the foreign Press could scarcely
be collected in a library. A glance through any foreign
newspaper will show that hardly a page in hardly an
issue is free from them. In Eastern Europe they were
particularly horrible. They were the almost conven-

134 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

tional form of journalistic expression on all sides. The
brutalization of the European mind was very thoroughly
carried out. But moral indignation and even physical
nausea were checked by the surfeit of horrors and the
blatant exaggerations. There can be no more dis-
creditable period in the history of journalism than the
four years of the Great War.

A neutral paper (Nieuwe Courant), published at The
Hague, summed up the effect of propaganda on
January 17, 1916:

. . . The paper war-propaganda is a poison, which out-
siders can only stand in very small doses. If the belligerents
continue to administer it the effect will be the opposite to
that expected. So it goes with the stream of literature on
the Cavell case, and the varied forms in which the Baralong
poison is presented to us. We leave it with a certain dis-
gust, after tasting it, and are only annoyed at the bitter
after-taste—the promised reprisals. . . .

XXIV
FAKED PHOTOGRAPHS

To the uninitiated there is something substantially
reliable in a picture obviously taken from a photograph.
Nothing would seem to be more authentic than a
snapshot. It does not occur to anyone to question a
photograph, and faked pictures therefore have special
value, as they get a much better start than any mere
statement, which may be criticized or denied. Only a
long time after, if ever, can their falsity be detected.
The faking of photographs must have amounted almost
to an industry during the war. All countries were
concerned, but the French were the most expert. Some
of the originals have been collected and reproduced.

Descriptions of a few of them may be given here :

In Das Echo, October 29, 1914, there was a photograph
of the German troops marching along a country road in
Belgium.

This was reproduced by Le Journal on November 26,
1914, under the title :

Les ALLEMANDS EN RETRAITE.

Cette photographie fournit une vision saississante de ce
que fut la retraite de Parmée du général von Hindenburg
aprés la bataille de la Vistule.

A photograph taken by Karl Delius, of Berlin, showed
the delivery of mail-bags in front of the Field Post
Office in Kavevara.

* How the World Madness was Engineered, by Ferdinand Avenarius.

136 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

This was reproduced in the Daily Mirror of
December 3, 1915, with the title :

MADE To WaAsH THE Huns’ Dirty LINEN.

The blond beasts are sweating the Serbians, who are
made to do the washing for the invaders. Like most custo-
mers who do not settle their bills, they are full of grumbles
and complaints. Here a pile has just arrived from the
wash.

Several photographs were taken during the pogrom
in Russia in 1905; some of these were circulated by
Jews in America. One of these photographs represented
a row of corpses with a crowd round them, and was
reproduced in Le Miroir, November 14, 1915, with the
title :

Les CriMES DES HorpEsS ALLEMANDES EN POLOGNE.

Several others of these were similarly reproduced in
newspapers. The Critica, a newspaper in the Argentine,
exposed German atrocities by this means.

A photograph was taken in Berlin of a crowd before
the royal palace on July 13, 1914 (before the outbreak
of war). This was reproduced in Le Monde Illustré,
August 21, 1915, with the heading :

ENTHOUSIASME ET JOIE DE BARBARES,

with an explanation that it was a demonstration to
celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania.

A photograph which appeared in the Berlin Tag, on
August 13, 1914, represented a long queue of men with
basins. Under it was written :

How we treat interned Russian and French; lining up
the interned before the distribution of food.

FAKED PHOTOGRAPHS 137

This was reproduced in the Daé/y News on April 2,
1915, with the title :

GERMAN WORKERS FEEL THE PINCH.

The above crowd lining up for rations is a familiar sight
in Germany. It reveals one aspect of our naval power.

A photograph of German officers inspecting munition
cases was reproduced by War Illustrated, January 30, 1915,
as “‘German officers pillaging chests in a French
chateau.”

A photograph of a German soldier bending over a
fallen German comrade was reproduced in War Iilus-
trated, April 17, 1915, with the title :

Definite proof of the Hun’s abuse of the rules of war.
German ghoul actually caught in the act of robbing a
Russian.

In the Berlin Lokalanzeiger of June 9, 1914, a photo-
graph was published of three cavalry officers who had
won cups and other trophies, which they are holding,
at the Army steeplechase in the Grunewald.

This was first reproduced in Wes Mir, a Russian
newspaper, with the title ‘‘ The German Looters in
Warsaw,” and also, on August 8, 1915, by the Daily
Mirror with the title :

THREE GERMAN CAVALRYMEN LOADED WITH GOLD AND
SILVER Loor.

Faked photographs were, of course, sent in great
numbers to neutral countries.

A German photograph of the town of Schwirwindt,
after the Russian occupation, was reproduced in
Iilustreret Familieblad (Denmark) as, ‘‘A French City
after a German Bombardment.”

138 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

A photograph from Das Leben in Bild, in 1917, of
three young German soldiers laughing, was entitled :

Home again. Three sturdy young Germans who suc-
ceeded in escaping from French imprisonment.

This came out in a Danish family paper on May 2,
1917, as:

Escaped from drumfire hell. Three German soldiers
apparently very happy to have become French prisoners of
war.

The citadel at Brest-Litovsk was fired by the retreat-
ing Russians, and a photograph appeared in Zeitbilder,
September 5, 1915, showing Germans carrying out the
corn in sacks.

This was reproduced in the Graphic, September 18,
1915, as, ““ German soldiers plundering a factory at Brest-
Litovsk, which was fired by the retreating Russians.”

Illustrated War News, December 29, 1915, gave a
photograph of war trophies. A sergeant is holding up
a sort of cat-o’-nine-tails whip.

WHAT WAS IT USED FoR? A GERMAN WHIP AMONG A
COLLECTION OF WAR TROPHIES.

These war trophies captured from the Germans in Flanders
have been presented to the Irish Rifles by a sergeant. The
presence of the whip is of curious significance.

The “ whip,” as a matter of fact, was an ordinary
German carpet-beater.

A Russian film represented German nurses in the
garb of religious sisters stabbing the wounded on the
battlefield.

A picture, not a photograph, which had a great

FAKED PHOTOGRAPHS 139

circulation, was called Chemin de la gloire (the Road of
Glory) in the Choses Vues (Things Seen) series.

In the background is a cathedral in flames, a long road
is strewn with bottles, and in the foreground is the body
of a little boy impaled to the ground by a bayonet.

But if pictures and caricatures were to be described,
there would be no end of it. Undoubtedly the cartoonist
had a great influence in all countries, especially Raemakers
and Punch. The unfortunate neutral countries were
bombarded with them from both sides.

A remarkable series of photographs was taken by a
Mr. F. J. Mortimer, Fellow of the Royal Photographic
Society, and published in 1912. They were widely
reproduced in illustrated periodicals. Among them was
a photograph of the Arden Craig sinking off the Scilly
Isles in January 1911. On March 31, 1917, a popular
illustrated weekly devoted a page to ‘‘ Camera Records
of Prussian Piracy,” and this particular photograph
was reproduced in a succession of pictures to illustrate
“a windjammer torpedoed off the English coast by the
criminally indiscriminate U-boat pirates.”

Mr. Mortimer’s photographs of British ships were
also reproduced in Germany under the heading of
“* Scenes from the German Navy.”

On September 28, 1916, the Daily Sketch gave a
photograph of a crowd of German prisoners under the
heading ‘“‘ Still They Come!” ‘‘ Between 3,000 and
4,000 prisoners have been taken in the past forty-eight
hours.” (Official.)

On October 10, 1918, the Daily Mirror reproduced
precisely the same photograph, under which was printed :
*¢ Just a very small portion of the Allies’ unique collection
of Hun war prisoners of the 1918 season.”

XXV
THE DOCTORING OF OFFICIAL PAPERS

Press lies and private lies may in certain circumstances
carry much weight. At the same time there are often
sections of the public who are less credulous, and there-
fore more suspicious. But when printed documents
appear with an official imprimatur—in this country the
royal arms and the superscription “‘ Presented to
Parliament by command of His Majesty,” or “ Printed
by order of the House of Commons ’”—everyone
believes that in these papers, at any rate, they have got
the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Only a
minority, perhaps, study them, but this minority writes
and furnishes the Press with indisputably authentic infor-
mation from ‘‘command papers.” The blue books,
yellow books, white books, orange books, etc., become
the basis of all propaganda.

It comes as a shock therefore to those who patrioti-
cally accept their Government’s story to find that
instances of sappressio veri abound in the form of passages
carefully and intentionally suppressed from published
official documents.

This practice, of course, did not originate during
the Great War. It is an old diplomatic tradition, justified
conceivably in cases where the concealment of injudicious
language on the part of a foreign statesman may prevent
the inflammation of public opinion, but carried to
unjustifiable lengths when a concealment or distortion of
the facts of the case is aimed at.

THE DOCTORING OF OFFICIAL PAPERS 141

Sir Edward Grey’s speech on August 3rd was a very
meagre and incomplete recital of events given to a
House which had been deliberately kept ignorant for
years. But it was well framed to have the desired
effect. Amongst the omissions was the German Ambas-
sador’s proposal of August 1st, in which he suggested
that Germany might be willing to guarantee not only
Belgian neutrality but also the integrity of France and
that of her colonies, and the Foreign Secretary further
omitted to mention that in this interview he had definitely
refused to formulate any conditions on which the
neutrality of the country might be guaranteed, though
the Ambassador requested him todo so. But by far the
most serious omission was his failure to read to the
House the last sentence in his letter to M. Cambon, a
sentence of vital importance. The sentence ran:

If these measures involved action, the plans of the General
Staff would at once be taken into consideration, and the
Government would then decide what effect should be given
to them.

This omission is far from being satisfactorily explained
in Twenty-Five Years by the casual statement, “ Perhaps
I thought the last sentence unimportant.”

The speeches of Ministers in the other European
Governments concerned at the time were, of course, all
patriotically distorted, and any information with regard
to facts which might qualify or mitigate the iniquity of
the opposite party was carefully suppressed.

The omission of dispatches or suppressions of pas-
sages in the official books of all the Governments are
far too numerous even to give as a list.

Some of the British suppressions are now apparent,
since the publication by the Foreign Office of further

142 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

diplomatic documents. Only a couple of examples
need be given.

In a telegram of July 24, 1914, from our Ambassador
at St. Petersburg, a passage was completely suppressed,
in which he indicated the agreement arrived at between
France and Russia during the visit of the President,
according to which they settled not to tolerate any
interference on the part of Austria in the interior affairs
of Serbia. In view of what was going on in Serbia,
this was highly significant.

A telegram appeared in the White Paper of 1914 from
the French Government, dated July 20th, saying that
““ reservists have been called up by tens of thousands in
Germany.” But a telegram from the British Ambas-
sador in Berlin of August 1st, saying that no calling up
of reserves had yet taken place (404), was suppressed.

Special official reports had to be given the necessary
war bias. Here is an instance from one of the
Dominions :

A unanimous resolution was adopted on June 29, 1926,
by the Council of South-West Africa. This body consider
the Blue Book of the South African Union directed against
the administration of German South-West Africa merely as
an instrument of war, and asked the Government to destroy
copies of the book existing among official documents or in
the bookshops. In his reply, the Prime Minister of South
Africa, General Hertzog, declared that he and his col-
leagues in the Government could appreciate the causes of
the Council’s resolution, and that he was prepared to fall in
as far as possible with its wishes. In his opinion, the unre-
liable and unworthy character of this document condemned
it to dishonourable burial, together with all kindred publi-
cations of the war period.

Dr. Schnee’s complaint te mandated African territories.

“< The Times,” May 16, 1927.

The French Yellow Book was a mass of suppressions,

THE DOCTORING OF OFFICIAL PAPERS 143

mutilations, and even falsifications. As a French writer
who has carefully examined this whole question writes : !
“The Government cut out of the Yellow Book
everything which concerned the Russian mobilization
like a criminal obliterates all traces of his crime.”
M. Demartial devotes a volume to the various ways in
which this official record was tampered with in order to
deceive the French people, and he asks: ‘‘ If the French
Government is innocent with regard to the war, why has
it falsified the collection of diplomatic documents which
expose the origins ?”

There were omissions, too, in the German official
White Book, as, for instance, a telegram from the Czar,
in which he proposed to submit the Austro-Serbian
dispute to arbitration.

A famous case of falsification was the report issued
by the Kurt Eisner revolutionary Government at
Munich in November 1918 which purported to give
the text of a dispatch from the Bavarian Minister at
Berlin. As published, this report showed the German
Government cynically contemplating the explosion of a
world war as the result of Austria’s proposed coercive
measures against Serbia. The incident gave rise to a
libel action. Twelve foreign authorities examined the
document, and all of them came to the conclusion that
there had been falsification. The French Professor of
the Sorbonne, M. Edouard Dujardin, declared: “‘ I am
of opinion that the text such as published by the
Bayerische Staatzeitung is one of the most manifest and
most criminal falsifications known to history.” The full
text showed that the German Government was con-
templating not a world war but a localized war between
Austria and Serbia.

’ L’ Evengile du Quai d’Orsay, by George Demartial.

144 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

But whatever may be said about suppressions by
other Governments, there is nothing to equal the
doctoring and garbling of the Russian Orange Book.
The omission not only of passages but of a whole series
of important telegrams and dispatches which passed
between the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Sazonov, and the Russian Ambassador in Paris, Isvolsky,
shows the determination to conceal the real attitude of
Russia and France during the critical days, and the
insertion of these suppressed documents, which was
subsequently made possible, puts a very different com-
plexion on the origins of the outbreak of war than that
which was accepted at the time.

Among the suppressions were a telegram stating that
“Germany ardently desired the localization of the
conflict” (July 24th)—‘‘ Counsels of moderation... .
We have to reject all these at the outset”; telegrams
showing the German Ambassador’s anxiety for peace ;
telegrams showing the warlike spirit of France and
instructions to the Russians to continue their prepara-
tions as quickly as possible (July 30-31). “‘ The French
Government have firmly decided upon war and begged
me to confirm the hope of the French General Staff
that all our efforts will be directed against Germany and
that Austria will be treated as a quantité négligeable.” In
some cases sentences were omitted and in many cases
the whole telegram was suppressed.

Statesmen in all countries, whom it would be foolish
to describe as dishonourable men, would shrink with
disgust from falsifying their own private or business
correspondence. Were they to do so, they would be
convicted by their own law courts as criminals and

t The text of the suppressed documents is given in Duty to Civiliza-
tion, by Francis Nielson.

THE DOCTORING OF OFFICIAL PAPERS 14;

condemned by public opinion. Yet, acting on behalf
of their country, with issues at stake of such vast signi-
ficance, they do not hesitate to lend themselves to a
deliberate attempt to mislead their people and the world,
and to endeavour to justify their attitude by resorting to
the meanest tricks.

XXVI
HYPOCRITICAL INDIGNATION

Gas warfare and submarine warfare offered instances of
violent outbursts of indignation on the part of the
Press, which events showed were gross hypocrisy.
This is an attitude rather than an expression of falsehood.

We must expect the Germans to fight like savages who
have acquired a knowledge of chemistry.
“ Daily Express,” April 27, 1915.

This atrocious method of warfare... this diabolical
contrivance. ... The wilful and systematic attempt to
choke and poison our soldiers can have but one effect upon
the British peoples and upon all the non-German peoples of
the earth. It will deepen our indignation and our resolution,
and it will fill all races with a horror of the German name.

“* The Times,” April 29, 1915.

But it turned out that the Germans had not been the
first to use poison gas. M. Turpin’s discoveries in
poison explosives had been advertised in the French
Press before this date, and the French War Ministry’s
official instructions with regard to the use of gas hand-
grenades had been issued in the autumn of 1914.

In May 1915 Colonel Maude wrote in Land and
Water :

All shells, all fires, all mining charges, give out asphyxiat-
ing gases, and from some shells the fumes are poisonous.
The use of these has been discussed for years, because the
explosive that liberates the deadly gas is said to possess a
quite unusual power; but the reason why many of these

HYPOCRITICAL INDIGNATION 147

types were not adopted was because they were considered
too dangerous for our gunners to transport and handle, not
that when they burst they would have poisoned the enemy.
At this time this quality of deadliness was defended on the
ground of humanity, as the death inflicted would be abso-
lutely certain and painless, and hence there would be no
wounded. In any case, at the beginning of this war it was
stated in all the French papers that the difficulty of handling
these shells had been overcome, and that they had been
employed on certain sectors of the French front with
admirable results. When the time comes to defend their
use, shall we really have the effrontery to claim for our
shells that they poison but do not asphyxiate? Moreover,
is not poisoning also covered by the Hague Convention ?
In spirit it undoubtedly is; but as I have not the text at
hand to refer to, it may possibly leave a loophole on this
question, through which our international lawyers might
escape.

Subsequently, of course, we adopted gas warfare and
perfected it.

Mr. Bruutnc: Is it not a fact . . . that we have a better
gas and a better protection and that now the Huns are
squealing ?

Mr. Bonar Law: I wish I were as sure of that as the
Honourable Member.

House of Commons, February 25, 1918.

Their (the British and French) gas masks to-day are more
efficient than the German; their gas is better and is better
used.

“* Daily Mail,” February 25, 1918.

The Allies vied with one another in the production of
poison gas, and the following article, by Mr. Ed. Berwick,
an American, shows the extent to which it had reached
before the end.

There were sixty-three different kinds of poison gas used
before the war ended, and in November 1918 our chemical

148 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

warfare service (established in June of that year) was engaged
in sixty-five “major research problems,” including eight
gases more deadly than any used up to that date. . . . One
kind rendered the soil barren for seven years, and a few
drops on a tree-trunk causes it to “ wither in an hour.”
Our arsenal at Edgewood, Maryland, and its tributaries was
turning out 810 tons weekly against 385 tons by France,
410 tons Britain, and only 210 Germany.

It was almost ready to increase its output to 3,000 tons a
week. . . . Congress had appropriated 100,000,000 dollars
for this chemical warfare service and allotted 48,000 men for
its use. The armistice rendered needless both allotment and
appropriation in such magnitude.

Foreign Affairs, July 1922.

Poison gas of incredible malignity, against which only a
secret mask (which the Germans could not obtain in time)
was proof, would have stifled all resistance and paralysed all
life on the hostile front subject to attack.

“ What War in 1919 would have Meant,” by Mr. Winston

Churchill, “ Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine,” September
1924.

Since the war, research and experiments have con-
tinued, and Great Britain is now said to lead the way
in this “‘ atrocious method of warfare,” ‘‘ this diabolical
contrivance,” the weapon of “ savages.”

Submarine warfare produced the same effect.

Germany cannot be allowed to adopt a system of open
piracy and murder.

Mr. Churchill, House of Commons, February 15, 1915.

To-day for the first time in history one of the Great
Powers in Europe proposes to engage in the systematic
conduct of maritime war by means hitherto condemned by
all nations as piratical.

“<The Times,” February 18, 1915.

It is unnecessary to multiply the instances of violent
and righteous indignation on the part of the Press and

HYPOCRITICAL INDIGNATION 149

individuals. But long before this event the other side of
the question had been put by no less a person than Sir
Percy Scott, who, writing in reply to Lord Sydenham in
The Times on July 16, 1914, that is, before the outbreak
of war, gave the following quotation from a letter
written by a foreign naval officer, and his comment on it:

If we went to war with an insular country depending
for its food supplies from overseas, it would be our business
to stop that supply. On the declaration of war we should
notify the enemy that she should warn those of her merchant
ships coming home not to approach the island, as we were
establishing a blockade of mines and submarines.

Similarly we should notify all neutrals that such a blockade
had been established, and that if any of their vessels
approached the island they would be liable to destruction
either by mines or submarines, and therefore would do so at
their own risk.

Commentary furnished by Sir Percy Scott :

Such a proclamation would, in my opinion, be perfectly
in order, and once it had been made, if any British or neutral
ships disregarded it, they could not be held to be engaged
in the peaceful avocations referred to by Lord Sydenham,
and, if they were sunk in the attempt, it could not be
described as a relapse into savagery or piracy in its blackest
form. If Lord Sydenham will look up the accounts of
what usually happened to the blockade-runners into
Charleston during the Civil War in America, I think he
will find that the blockading cruisers seldom had any scruples
about firing into the vessels they were chasing or driving
them ashore, and even peppering them, when stranded, with
grape and shell. The mine and the submarine torpedo will
be newer deterrents.

In one of his characteristically facetious letters
(addressed to Admiral Tirpitz on his resignation,
March 29, 1916), Lord Fisher wrote :

150 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

I don’t blame you for the submarine business. I’d have
done the same myself, only our idiots in England wouldn’t
believe it when I told ’em.

There was the same outburst over air-raids. We
were given the impression that the Huns were the first
to rain down death from the sky. But among the
lantern lectures for propaganda purposes given in 1918
by the National War Service Committee, there were
slides illustrating bomb-dropping on German towns.
The printed synopsis of one of these slides ran :

These early raids by R.N.A.S. were the first examples of
bomb-dropping attacks from the air in any war, and the
pity is that we had not enough aeroplanes at the beginning of
the war.

Lord Montagu said in the House of Lords in July
1917 that

it was absolute humbug to talk of London being an un-
defended city. The Germans had a perfect right to raid
London. London was defended by guns and aeroplanes,
and it was the chief centre of the production of munitions.
We were therefore but deluding ourselves in talking about
London being an undefended city, and about the Germans
in attacking it being guilty of an act unworthy of a civilized
nation. That might be an unpopular thing to say at the
moment, but it was the actual fact of the situation. The
right line for the Government to take was to say to the
civil population: ‘‘ This is a war of nations, and not alone
of armies, and you must endeavour to bear the casualties
you suffer in the same way as the French and Belgian civil
populations are bearing the casualties incidental to this kind
of warfare.

Raids on German towns such as Karlsruhe were
undertaken by the Allies, and all talk of inhumanity was

dropped.

HYPOCRITICAL INDIGNATION 151

Who does not remember the fierce indignation in Great
Britain at the news that the Germans had sunk to such
unspeakable depths as to use poisonous gases? The
British censors gladly passed the most horrifying details as
to the suffering caused by this new method of torture.
Soon the London censor forbade further reference of any
kind to the use of gas, which meant, of course, that England
was going to do a little poisoning on her own account.
To-day the use of gas by the British is hailed, not only
without shame, but with joyous satisfaction. Like the
Allied killing of innocent women and children in German
towns by their fliers, it shows again how rapidly one’s
ideals go by the board in war.

“* New York Evening Post,” June 30, 1916.

XXVII
OTHER LIES

Wiru such profusion was falsehood sown that it would
be impossible at this already distant date to gather in
the whole crop. A mere assertion, even from a private
individual, was often enough to set the ball rolling.
The Press was only too grateful for any suggestion
which might release another flood of lies, and the
Government, when it was not concerned with its own
subterfuges, was always ready, by disowning responsi-
bility, to avoid direct denial of popular lies.

A few cases of some less important and some more
ridiculous tales may be given.

THE GOVERNESS.

Almost every foreign governess or waiter in the
country was under grave suspicion, and numberless
were the stories invented about them. The best
edition of the governess story is given by Sir Basil
Thomson : !

A classic version was that the governess was missing
from the midday meal, and that when the family came to
open her trunks, they discovered under a false bottom a
store of high-explosive bombs. Everyone who told this
story knew the woman’s employer; some had even seen
the governess herself in happier days: ‘‘ Such a nice, quiet
person, so fond of the children; but now one comes to
think of it, there was something in her face, impossible to
describe, but a something.”

* Queer People, by Sir Basil Thomson.

OTHER LIES 153

THE WAITER.

A Swiss waiter who had drawn on a menu-card a
plan of the tables in the hotel dining-room where he
was in charge was actually brought in hot haste to
Scotland Yard on the urgent representations of a visitor
to the hotel, who was convinced that the plan was of
military importance.

A German servant girl at Bearsden, near Glasgow,
with a trunk full of plans and photographs, was another
fabrication.

ENAMELLED ADVERTISEMENTS.

There was a report that enamelled iron advertisements
for ‘‘ Maggi soup,” which were attached to hoardings in
Belgium, were unscrewed by German officers in order
that they might read the information about local
resources which was painted in German on the back by
spies who had preceded them. Whether this was true or
not, it was generally accepted, and screwdriver parties
were formed in the London suburbs for the examination
of the backs of enamelled advertisements.

CONCRETE PLATFORMS.

The emplacements laid down for guns at Maubeuge,
made in the shape of tennis-courts, led to an amazingly
widespread belief that all hard courts, paved back
gardens, or concrete roofs were designed for this
purpose. Anyone who possessed one of these came
under suspicion, not only in the British Isles but in
America, and the scare actually spread to California.

The Bystander had a cartoon in March 1915 of
Bernhardi writing his books, a sword in his teeth and a
revolver in his left hand, on the wall a plan labelled
“* proposed concrete bed at Golders Green.”

154 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

THE TUBES.

The Tube as a refuge from Zeppelin raids naturally
came in for attention. Sir Basil Thomson gives one of
the forms of an invention in this connection.

An English nurse had brought a German officer back
from death’s door. In a burst of gratitude, he said, at
parting, ““I must not tell you more, but beware of the
Tubes in April (1915).” As time wore on the date was
shifted forward month by month. We took the trouble to
trace this story from mouth to mouth until we reached the
second mistress in a London boarding-school. She declared
that she had heard it from the charwoman who cleaned the
school, but that lady stoutly denied she had ever told so
ridiculous a story.

BoMBING OF HospIrALs.

In May 1918 the Press was filled with articles of the
most violent indignation at the deliberate bombing of
hospitals by the Germans. The Times (May 24, 1918),
said: ‘‘It was on a par with all the abominations that
have caused the German name to stink in the nostrils
of humanity since the war began, and will cause it to
stink while memory endures,” and recommended, after
they had been vanquished, “‘ ostracism from the society
of civilized nations.” There was a Punch cartoon, and
the rest of the Press yelled. The soldiers, however, as
usual, did not indulge in hysterics, and explained the
matter of the bombing of the hospitals at Etaples, after
which the following appeared in a leader published by
the Manchester Guardian.

Towards the end of last month and the beginning of this
public opinion here—and, for the matter of that, we imagine
in most other countries too—was horrified by messages
from correspondents in France who described the deliberate

OTHER LIES 155

bombing of British hospitals by German airmen. In one
case the correspondent asserted categorically that there
could have been no mistake ; the hospitals, and not anything
of military value, were the objects at whose destruction the
raiders aimed. Well might such news cause even a fiercer
fire of indignation than now burns against the Germans,
since inhumanity could reach no lower depth than an attack
on the sick and wounded and those who minister to them.
There was no apparent room to doubt the accuracy of these
reports, for there is a censorship in the field which not only
prevents the correspondent from saying anything that it
disapproves, but can overtake an error if by some mischance
he has fallen, as he may easily do, into inaccuracy. So
long, then, as these reports arrived and went uncorrected,
it was right to suppose that they represented the facts. But
we believe it is the view of the military authorities that
there is no sufficient evidence to show that these were deli-
berate attacks on hospitals. The military view is that
hospitals must sometimes, on both sides of the front, be
placed near objects of military importance, such as railways
or camps or ammunition dumps, and that in a night raid
hospitals run the risk of being hit when the military objects
round them are attacked. But if this is the authoritative
military view, how comes it that correspondents were
allowed to send misleading messages to this country, or
that when messages had been sent, steps were not taken to
remove the impression they had caused? Our case against
the Germans is strong enough in all conscience, and
thoroughly established. We can afford to do justice even
to them, and we ought to do no less.
** Manchester Guardian,” June 15, 1918.

The constant assertion that on no occasion were
hospital ships used for the carrying of any war material
or soldiers was contrary to fact.

THE CROWN PRINCE.

The German Crown Prince, when he was not dead,
was always represented as stealing valuables from

156 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

French chateaux. The following is a sample of what it
was thought necessary to write on this subject :

The Crown Prince of Prussia may yet be immortalized as
a prince among burglars and a burglar among princes! .. .
Germany makes war in a manner that would have com-
mended itself to Bill Sikes, and the Kaiser’s eldest son, in his
eagerness to secure the “‘ swag,” has merited the right to be
considered an imperial Fagin. . . . This modern Germany,
whose spirit is epitomized in the Crown Prince, fights like
a valiant blackguard. It will die like a hero, but it will
murder like an apache and will steal like a mean pickpocket.

Thefts by the Crown Prince, “‘ Daily Express,” November 1,

1914.

An article appeared in La Nowvelle Revue in 1915,
written by an Irish lady whose friend had witnessed a
secret ceremony at Menin at which “‘ the German Crown
Prince was crowned King of Belgium in the market-
place.” This was reproduced in the English Press.

TUBERCULOSIS GERMS.

The Germans were accused of having inoculated
French prisoners with tuberculosis germs. So emphatic
was this assertion that a question was asked in Parlia-
ment on the subject on April 24, 1917. The Govern-
ment, however, disclaimed having any information on
the subject, and the story was dropped.

THe Parriotric Liar.

The method of the patriotic liar can be illustrated
by the case of a clergyman, who informed the Manchester
Geographical Society on October 7, 1914: “‘ You will
hear only one hundredth part of the actual atrocities
this war has produced. The civilized world could
not stand the truth. It will never hear it. There are,

OTHER LIES 157

up and down England to-day, scores—I am _ under-
stating the number—of Belgian girls who have had
their hands cut off. That is nothing to what we could
tell you.” Later in the same month the reverend
gentleman wrote to the Daily News, asking, “ Will
anyone who has actually seen such cases here in England
send me full particulars? ”’ He had made his statement
first and was endeavouring to get his evidence after-
wards.
Miners BurteD ALIVE.

On August 29th the Daily Citizen of Glasgow had
a paragraph headed “ Miners Buried Alive! Enemy
Block Shafts of Belgian Pits.” On December 1st the
Daily Citizen (without heading the paragraph) gave the
statement of M. Lombard (General Secretary of the
Belgian Miners) to the Executive of the Miners’ Federa-
tion of Great Britain, in which he “ denied that there
was any truth in the rumour circulated so freely in this
country that the Germans had shut up the pit mouths in
various places, thus suffocating miners underground.”

War News For THE U.S.A.

A former agent of the Standard Oil Company, living
at Crieff, Scotland, supplied ‘‘ war news ” to the U.S.A.
The Strathearn Herald, in December 1914, gave some
samples. ‘There was, of course, the handless Belgian
baby who had arrived in Glasgow.

Over a hundred Germans were found with cages full of
homing pigeons in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

But the most elaborate bit of news was that

when the British Army had to retreat in France about a
month ago, General French asked for reinforcements from

158 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

some of the French Generals, and was refused. Kitchener
went over to the Continent the next day, and the only
excuse was that the French troops were tired. Upon investi-
gation, however, it was found that two of the French
Generals had German wives. Kitchener ordered two of
them to be shot.

A SOupier’s LETTER.

At a recent meeting in the North of England, an
ex-service man in the audience related the following
experience :

He was wounded and taken prisoner on the Western
front, and for some time was in hospital in Germany.
When well on the road to recovery, he learned that he
was to be removed from the hospital, as beds were
wanted for wounded Germans, and that he was being
sent to a special camp for convalescents. Ina short note
to his relatives he informed them of the removal.

On returning home after the war, he was amazed to
find that the local Press had obtained permission from
his people to use the letter, and had woven around it an
“atrocity” story telling how, when at the point of
death, he had been taken from bed in order to make
room for a slightly wounded German, and had been
sent on a journey of very many miles to a camp, where
his wounds could not possibly receive proper attention,
so there was practically no chance of his recovery owing
to this barbarism on the part of the Germans.

FAKED GERMAN ORDER.

A private serving in the 24th Division relates how,
in 1917, while in the Somme area, a typed copy of a
translation of an alleged German order was circulated
among the troops. The order required German women

OTHER LIES 159

to cohabit with civilians and soldiers on leave so that
there might be no shortage of children to make up
for war losses. Rewards were offered for those who
zealously carried out the order. Typed out by official
machines, the circular was posted up in the canteens.

RusstIAN ARSENAL DESTROYED.

On September 15, 1915, in the Evening News, there
were large headlines :

BLOW THAT CRIPPLED RUSSIA
OnLy ARSENAL WRECKED BY VAST EXPLOSION

and there was a full description of how, through German
spies and treachery, “‘ the Russian Woolwich had been
blown to pieces.” “‘ Ochta was the Russian Woolwich,
and much more than the Russian Woolwich. It was
the only munition factory in the whole of Russia.”

It subsequently turned out that the Ochta explosion
was not at an arsenal at all, but was due to an accident
in a factory which had been temporarily turned into a
munition factory. No German spies had had anything
to do with it. It was an inconsiderable affair, and a
small paragraph with the true version was inserted in a
later issue of the paper.

Amusingly enough, in the same issue and on the very
same page, there appeared a satirical article on “‘ The
Rumour Microbe,” laughing at a man who said ‘* That
a relative of his had a relation who had seen a Zeppelin
come down on Hampstead Heath, and a man went to
some stables and got out a number of horses, which
towed it away.”

The careful perusal of the files of newspapers, British
and foreign, during these four years, would yield an

160 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

amazing harvest of falsehood. As the public mind is
always impressed by anything that appears in print, the
influence of the Press in inflaming one people against
the other must have been very considerable, and in many
people’s opinion very laudable.

XXVIII
THE MANUFACTURE OF NEWS

THE FALL OF ANTWERP.

November 1914.

When the fall of Antwerp got known, the church bells
were rung (meaning in Germany).
Kolnische Zeitung.

According to the Kéo/nische Zeitung, the clergy of Antwerp
were compelled to ring the church bells when the fortress
was taken.

Le Matin.

According to what Le Matin has heard from Cologne,
the Belgian priests who refused to ring the church bells
when Antwerp was taken have been driven away from
their places.

The Times.

According to what The Times has heard from Cologne via
Paris, the unfortunate Belgian priests who refused to ring
the church bells when Antwerp was taken have been sentenced
to hard labour.

Corriére della Sera.

According to information to the Corriére della Sera from
Cologne via London, it is confirmed that the barbaric con-
querors of Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian
priests for their heroic refusal to ring the church bells by
hanging them as living clappers to the bells with their heads
down,

Le Matin.

XXIX
WAR AIMS

As there was great uncertainty how, if victory were
achieved, the spoils would be divided, it was impossible
for statesmen, in the Allied nations, to be precise as to
what specific aims with regard to territorial adjustments
and colonial acquisitions could be laid down as desirable
objects, without rousing jealousy and suspicion amongst
themselves. It became necessary therefore to announce
some general high-sounding moral ideals which might
give the war the character of an almost religious crusade.
They were particularly unfortunate in selecting a
number of cries everyone of which has proved, in the
long run, to be false.

A War tro CrusH MILIrarisM.

Everyone knows now that militarism cannot be
crushed by war. Even if it is removed from one
quarter it only grows stronger elsewhere. Militarism
can only be crushed by the growth of real democracy
in an era of peace. Only a few figures are required to
show how false this cry was if it was ever believed by
anyone. The Morning Post was honest enough to refer
to it as “ this absurd talk.”

THE BRITISH EMPIRE.
EXPENDITURE ON FIGHTING SERVICES,
1913-14. 1924-25.
£110,750,000 £117,525,000
While fully taking into account the fall in the value
of money, which would show a slight decrease in the

WAR AIMS 165

second figure rather than increase, no substantial reduc-
tion, which might be expected as a consequence of a
war to end militarism, is in any way apparent.

For the same period the aggregate totals for the four
Allied powers, France, Italy, the United States, and
Japan are:

1913. 1925.
£194,380,625 £244,864,477

Since the war, that is to say, from 1918 to 1926,
Great Britain has spent over £1,300,000,000 on arma-
ments. To have said therefore that the war would
crush militarism, was the most extravagant and foolish of
all speculations. It would be an insult to the intelligence
of any of the statesmen to suggest that they ever for a
moment believed it would be true.

A War to DEFEND SMALL NATIONALITIES.

The ultimatum to Serbia and the infringement of
Belgian neutrality led to the widespread cry that we
were fighting “‘ for the rights of small nationalities.”

It means next that room must be found and kept for the
independent existence and free development of the smaller
nationalities, each with a corporate consciousness of its own.

Mr. Asquith on War Aims, Dublin, September 26, 1914.

There were a host of other declarations from
responsible Ministers of a similar character.

But this was no more true than any of the other
cries. Apart from the minorities placed under alien
rule by frontier delimitations drawn for strategic
purposes and not according to race or nationality,
Montenegro was wiped off the map by the Peace Treaties,
although the restoration of Montenegro was specially
mentioned by the Prime Minister on January 5, 1918
(National War Aims pamphlet No. 33), the British

164 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

occupation of Egypt continues, the Syrians have been
subjected to severe repression by the French (the
bombing of Damascus), the attempt of the Riffs at
securing independence led to their being blotted out,
Nicaragua and Panama are being subjected to the
political domination of the United States, and other
instances might be given in which the struggle of
“small nationalities” is simply regarded as a revolu-
tionary or subversive move. There may be good
political reasons for the instances given in the eyes of
the Great Powers, but the endeavour to persuade the
people that we were fighting for small nationalities was
the purest hypocrisy.

A War to MAKE THE WorLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY.

The absurdity of this meaningless cry on the part of
the Allies, amongst whom was Czarist Russia, is obvious.
Its insincerity is proved by results. There is now the
most ruthless dictatorship ever established in Italy ;
an imitation of it in Spain; a veiled dictatorship in
Poland ; a series of attempted dictatorships in Greece ;
something which approaches near to a dictatorship in
Hungary; Turkey and Persia are both dominated by
individuals with almost sovereign prerogatives, and the
Soviet system is a form of dictatorship. In fact, except
in Great Britain, the United States, the Scandinavian
countries, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, parlia-
mentary government has been in grave danger where it
has not been entirely superseded.

A War to Enp War.

This was hardly an original cry. It has been uttered
in previous wars, although every schoolboy knows that
wat breeds war.

WAR AIMS 165

We have long been deceived by the false counsels of
politicians and sentimentalists who are even now pretending
that this is a war that will end war. War will never end as
long as human nature continues to be human nature.

“* Morning Post,” October 20, 1915.

So far as the Great War is concerned, the Morning
Post seems to be correct up to date. Since 1918 fighting
has never ceased in the world. There has been war
on the part of the Allies against Russia, war between
Turkey and Greece, the Black and Tan exploits in
Ireland, the armed occupation of the Ruhr, war of
France and Spain against the Riffs, war of France against
the Syrians, military action on the part of the U.S.A. in
Nicaragua, fighting in Mexico, and incessant war in
China.

No TerRRiTORY FOR GREAT BRITAIN.

The statement that whatever we were fighting for we
desired no fresh territory was frequently made. Con-
sidering that the British Empire comprised over thirteen
million square miles of the earth’s surface in 1914, the
statement was accepted as wise and sensible. A few
of the chief declarations on the subject may be given.

We have no desire to add to our Imperial burdens either
in area or in responsibility.
Mr. Asquith, October 1914.

Our direct and selfish interests are small.
Mr. Asquith, November 1914.

We are not fighting for territory.
Mr. Bonar Law, December 1916.

We are not fighting a war of conquest.
Mr. Lloyd George, February 1917.

Such a victory as will give not aggrandizement of territory
nor any extension of our Empire.
Mr. Long, February 1917.

166 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

So much for the protestations for public consumption.
Now as to the facts with regard to what “fell to us”
when it was all over.

Square Miles.
Egypt, formerly under Turkish suzerainty, became

part of the British Empire sis 350,000
Cyprus, formerly under Turkish suzerainty, “became

part of the British Empire 3,584
German South-West Africa, mandate held by the

Union of South Africa... 322,450

German East Africa, mandate held by Great Britain 384,180
Togoland and Cameroons, divided between Great

Britain and France (say half) .. es «+ 112,415
Samoa, mandate held by New Zealand... 1,050
German New Guinea and Island south of Equator,

mandate held by Australia a 90,000
Palestine, mandate held by Great Britain .. 9,000

Mesopotamia (Iraq), mandate held by Great Britain 143,250
Total in square miles .. ar ++ 1,415,929

This is not a bad total of “ conquest” “territory,”
“addition to Imperial burdens in area and responsi-
bility,’ and “extension of Empire.” But surely it
would have been better not to make the false declara-
tions which inevitably bring against us the charge of
hypocrisy.

XXX
FOREIGN LIES

(A) GERMANY.

THE similarity of the lines on which lying was conducted
in Germany to our own in this country shows well how
duping the people is a necessary adjunct of war all the
world over.

Within the nation the censorship was stricter than it
was here. No decent word with regard to the enemy
was allowed, and the good treatment of prisoners in
British camps was suppressed. The same amazing
stupidity with regard to concealments was shown as in
this country. But a worse mistake was made in
depicting the situation up to the end in rose colour and
with exaggerated optimism. The real truth as to the
course of events was concealed, every enemy success
was understated, the effect of American intervention
was minimized, the condition of German resources
exaggerated, so that when the final catastrophe came,
many people were taken by surprise. In this connection
the Germans have got a stronger indictment against
their authorities than we have. Cautions and warnings
were not omitted in this country.

The Press Bureau (Pressekonferenz) was presided over
by a soldier. Casualties were, so far as possible, con-
cealed. On November 15, 1914, the Pressekonferenz
stated there were a few hundred casualties, while the
official list contained at the time 55,000 names. One of
the members of the Pressekonferenz echoed our War

168 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Office circular' when he said, on one occasion, in
dealing with a false official report : ‘ It is not so much
the accuracy of the news as its effect that matters.” 2

The Turks were embarrassing allies. The massacres
of Armenians had to be concealed, although attempts
were made in some papers to defend them.

Our poet-writers and professors had their exact
counterparts in Germany and gave orthodox “ patriot-
ism ” an intellectual and literary tone.

Abroad, German lying was not very skilful. It was
either too subtle or too clumsy. They had a wide
field to cover with so many nations against them.
“Encirclement ”? was the chief cry and, in the case of
Russia and France, aggression.

In October 1914 Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria
declared that England’s ambition “for years had been
turned to surround us with a ring of enemies in order
to strangle us” (uns mit einem Ring von Feinden zu
umgeben um uns zu erdrosseln), and there were many
similar declarations.

With regard to the deliberate policy of encirclement,
so far as Great Britain is concerned, Herr Rudolf
Kircher remarks, in his book Englander (1926) :

Grey’s personality is the living proof that a policy of
encirclement as a war aim, as was imagined in Germany,
never existed. All these were fantastic suppositions, as
fantastic as the idea that the German people were ripe and
ready for an attack and struggle for world supremacy.

The German Government, like all the other Govern-
ments, was blameless and at the mercy of the machina-
tions of enemy Governments. They had no chief
Monster to depict as the Allies had, but only a number

' See page 20. 2 Die grosse Zeit der Luge, Hellmut v. Gerlach.

FOREIGN LIES 169

of not very distinguished statesmen. In the early days
of panic they started with “‘a military report” that
*‘ French aviators had dropped bombs in the vicinity of
Nuremberg ” on August 3, 1914, and flaming headlines
appeared in the newspapers. But the Prussian Minister
at Munich telegraphed to Berlin that there was “no
evidence of dropping of bombs and still less, naturally,
that the aviators were French” (Kautsky documents,
No. 758). At the same time there was a report from
the Governor of Diisseldorf that “eighty French
officers in the uniform of Prussian officers, in twelve
automobiles, had made a vain attempt to cross the
frontier at Walbeck.” Both these reports were tele-
graphed by Herr Jagow, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
to the Ministers at Brussels and The Hague, to be
brought to the attention of the Governments as a viola-
tion of international law. Both were no doubt believed,
but neither of them had any foundation. On the other
hand, there were several instances of the violation of
French territory by German frontier patrols before
August 3, 1914.

Apart from the absurdities of “‘ Gott strafe England ”
and “‘ the Hymn of Hate,” Great Britain was naturally
singled out for special attention. On September 3,
1914, the Frankfurter Zeitung printed a speech by Mr.
John Burns which was purely imaginary. In October
there appeared in the New York American an interview
with a “highly placed representative of the British
Government ” which was proved to be entirely false.
Aeroplanes were used to drop on French trenches and
billets picture-postcards of ruined French churches with
the legend on them, ‘“‘ Wrecked by the English.”
There were the usual exaggerated reports and startling
statements as to what was going on in enemy countries,

170 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

despair, demoralization and panic, accusations of abuse
of the “‘ white flag,” specially against British troops, and
other “‘ necessary ”’ war lies.

Neutral countries, of course, received propaganda
from both sides. There was a German film depicting
German soldiers feeding Belgian and French children,
and English prisoners grinning with delight as they
worked under the stern eyes of the Prussian soldiers.

On November 25, 1914, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung published in facsimile a translation of a report
written by General Ducarne to the Belgian War Minister
on April 10, 1906, recording the visit of Colonel
Barnardiston with regard to the dispatch of the Expe-
ditionary Force in the event of war between Germany
and France. In the translation which was reproduced
in other newspapers without the facsimile there were
three mistakes.

(2) An interpolation, which was an integral part of
the text, ran as follows: “ L’entrée des Anglais en
Belgique ne se ferait qu’aprés la violation de notre
neutralité par Allemagne.” (The entry of the British
into Belgium will only take place after the violation of
our neutrality by Germany.) This was represented as a
marginal note and given in French, so that many readers
would not understand it.

(4) In the passage: ‘“‘ He (Colonel Barnardiston)
emphasized that our conversation must be absolutely
confidential,” the word “ conversation ” was translated
by Abkommen, as if it were “‘ convention.”

(c) The final date in French, “ Fin Septembre 1906,”
was translated ‘‘ Abgeschlossen September 1906,” i.e.
** concluded,” giving the impression of “a convention ”
having been “ concluded.”

The mistakes, each taken separately, might have been

FOREIGN LIES 171

errors of carelessness, but taken all three together,
undoubtedly point to a deliberate attempt at falsification.

In the early months of the war the Wolff Bureau
circulated a report in the papers: ‘“‘ To-day a French
doctor, assisted by two French officers in disguise,
attempted to infect a well at Metz with plague and
cholera bacillus ; the criminals were caught and shot.”
An official démenti of this story was subsequently issued.

The greatest tunnel in Germany, at Cochen, on the
frontier, was reported to have been destroyed by an
innkeeper, Nicolai, of Cochen, and his son, both of
whom were shot. The Rheinish-Westfalische Zeitung
stated that after careful investigation it was discovered
that Nicolai was a naturalized German, French by
birth, and it was a matter for congratulation that the
criminal was not a genuine German. The following
day the sub-Prefect of Cochen announced that there
was not a word of truth in the supposed plot ; Nicolai
was alive and a highly respected citizen, whilst his
son was serving in a Prussian regiment.

Atrocity lies abounded in Germany just as in this
country. Gouging out of eyes there seems to have been
as great a favourite as the Belgian babies without hands
here.

In September 1914 a lady of Cologne was informed
that a whole room was given up in a hospital at Aix-la-
Chapelle to wounded soldiers who had had their eyes
gouged out in Belgium. On inquiry,a leading doctor at
Aix-la-Chapelle declared there was no such room and
no single case of the sort had been observed. But the
story wandered from Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, where
again the chief doctor of the hospitals had to deny it.
Then it travelled to Sigmaringen. The Weser Zeitung
in Bremen took it up and wrote in a similar way about

172 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

a hospital in Berlin. This was denied by the Kom-
mandatur der Residenz. It reached its climax when it
was reported that a small boy of ten had seen “‘ a whole
bucketful of soldiers’ eyes” (ein ganzer Eimer voll
Soldaten-augen).

Die Zeit in Bild (January 12, No. 38) gave circum-
stantial accounts of a priest who wore a chain round
his neck made up of rings taken from fingers he had
cut off.

An official report from Luttich, where this was
supposed to have happened, stated there was no such
case.

In the Kélnische Volkszeitung, September 15, 1914, it
was related how a company of German soldiers were
marching through a Belgian village when the priest,
who stood before the door of the church, invited the
captain to come in with his soldiers, “‘for it was
good,” he said, “even in these dark times, to think of
God” (da es doch in dieser schweren Zeit gut sei auch
an den lieben Gott zu denken). The captain accepted
the invitation. A machine gun was concealed behind
the altar. When the church was full the machine gun
was unmasked and the whole company shot down.

Such stories as these ! arose chiefly from anti-Catholic
bias. Priests were accused of harbouring French
soldiers in their houses, but no case was proved. An
incident of which many and varied versions were given
was that of Demange, priest of Lagarde. He was said to
have betrayed the position of the German troops to the
enemy, to have put a machine gun in the tower of his
church with which to shoot down Germans. He was
reported to have been shot, and his body pierced by
thirty bayonet wounds was seen before the church door

* See Der Lugengeist in Volkerkrieg, by Bernard Duhr.

FOREIGN LIES 173

of Lagarde. Not only was the whole thing an inven-
tion, but it turned out, from official information, that
Demange, who was alive, had behaved with heroism
in resisting the enemy, and had been praised by German
officers,

The variations of the story and its exposure as a
falsehood appeared in the Frankftrter Zeitung (Sep-
tember 18, 1914) and the Ké/nische Volkszeitung (October
II, 1914).

On August 31, 1914, the Berliner Lokalanzeiger reported
that a nurse in Amsterdam had heard from a German
officer how, after Lowen had been occupied, all was
quiet. But later the bodies of fifty German soldiers,
shot by the monks, were found in the cellar of the
monastery. The inmates were thereupon arrested and
the Superior shot.

This story was widely circulated, and as it was likely
to embitter religious feeling General von Bissing issued
a complete denial of the report and an order that it
should not be circulated in the Press (Miinster, Sep-
tember 6, 1914). Nevertheless the story has been
incorporated in several German books on the war.

In September 1914 Sergeant (Unteroffizier) Adolf
Schmidt related, in a letter to his parents, how he and
his troop had been invited by a French priest to have
some coffee. Being suspicious, he called a doctor to
examine the coffee, and found it had strychnine mixed
with it. The priest and his cook were shot the next
morning (Schwarzwalder Chronik, September 18, 1914).

The whole story proved to be an invention of the
sergeant, who retracted it.

In April 1915 the Vossische Zeitung reported the
invasion of Egypt by the Senussi with an army of
yo,ooo men. This invention was reproduced in the

174 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Corriére della Sera in Italy and denied by the British
Embassy.

A letter (August 26, 1914) to the Hamburger Fremden-
blatt related how the Belgians supplied the German
troops with cigars filled with gunpowder, which blinded
them when they lit them. Another letter to the
Berliner Tageblatt (August 26th) reported that the
Belgians filled the letters of the Germans with narcotic
powder.

On January 23, 1915, the Ké/nische Zeitung gave the
most gruesome description, by an eye-witness, of a
scene on the Eastern front in which a boy of twelve
years old had been secured to a table by nails driven
through each of his fingers. Judge Rosenberg, of
Essen, took the matter up and asked the name of the
place where this had happened. After delay and
evasions and considerable difficulty in discovering the
author of the tale, he ascertained that it had taken place
at Prostken. Accordingly he wrote to the authorities
there, and received a reply on September 14, 1916, to
the effect that nothing was known of any such incident
in the district.

That there were incidents of cruelty and barbarity
on the Eastern front there can be no doubt. But these
were exaggerated until wholesale accusations were made
against the Russians for habitually cutting off men’s
arms and legs and women’s breasts.

Both on the East and West, atrocity stories were
circulated without the names of place or person.

The following is an instance of the kind of story
which the German public was made to accept as typical
of the methods of their enemies.

On October 29, 1915, the Ké/nische Volkszeitung
described the following incident :

FOREIGN LIES 175

In consequence of the proclamation of the Holy War, a
number of British Askari of Mohammedan religion refused
to fight against the Germans of East Africa; thereupon
these 112 “ rebels ” were handcuffed and thrashed and taken
to Nairobi, where they were condemned by court martial to
be hanged. But a few days later, instead of hanging them,
a new order was given, according to which the condemned
men were to be used as living targets for the black recruits
in their rifle practice. One morning in November of last
year ten of these prisoners were taken to a place south of
Nairobi, where some British Askaris were in camp. The
condemned men had first of all to dig a huge pit, where they
were afterwards to be buried. They were then bound,
hand and foot, gagged, and placed in the bushes, tall grass
or on trees, so that only a small part of their bodies was
visible. English officers gave the instructions in shooting.
At a distance of from 100 to 300 paces the recruits shot at
their living targets. This practice lasted the whole morning
and afternoon, and by the evening two men were found to be
dead, and the others, who were terribly wounded, were then
killed. The bodies were then thrown into the pit. This
shooting practice was continued daily until all the condemned
men were killed.

An Englishman who was in Berlin in the early days
of the war heard, at the International Trade Union head-
quarters, continual discussions as to the possibility of
reaching and attacking the British coast. It was argued
that such an attack would shatter the prestige of Great
Britain. The Englishman maintained that it would only
greatly assist recruiting.

When the actual bombardment of Hartlepool, Scar-
borough, and Whitby took place, the morning Press
gave large type to the event. “Fortified Towns of
Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough Bombarded.”
Then followed the Wolff Telegraph Bureau description
of the nature of the fortifications on the hill at Scar-
borough and again at Whitby. The text carried the

176 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

implication that it was because these were well-known
fortified towns that they had been selected for bom-
bardment. The matter was discussed on the day the
newspaper was published, and the German Trade
Unionists pointed again and again to the evidence in
the Press of the military nature of these three towns.
The Englishman accurately described Hartlepool and
Scarborough as favourite holiday resorts of British
children and Whitby as a place of pilgrimage for visitors
both from England and America. But he made no
impression. They were greatly annoyed and preferred
their own lie, which was universally accepted in
Germany. It will be remembered that the Dat/y Mail
replied with a row of photographs of babies.

A lie exposed by no less a person than the Foreign
Secretary must certainly be recorded. Sir Edward
Grey, speaking on May 25, 1916, in the House of
Commons, referred to a statement of the German
Chancellor (Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg) in the follow-
ing terms:

I did find one new thing in the statement of the German
Chancellor with regard to the terms of peace. That is the
statement as to what the attitude of the British Government
was in the time of diplomatic difficulty about Bosnia. That
statement is untrue so far as we are concerned. The charge
that our attitude was bellicose about the negotiations con-
cerning Bosnia is a first-class lie. The idea that we attempted
to urge Russia to war and that we said that this country
would be ready to go to war about Bosnia is directly
contrary to the truth.

(B) FRANCE.
Whatever criticisms may be made of the French, we
can mever accuse them of being hypocrites. They
realized the great importance of “‘ propaganda” and

FOREIGN LIES 177

went to work with a will. They are neither ashamed
of the fact nor attempt to conceal it. We always mixed
our lies up with righteous indignation and high
morality, and tried to make them as statesmanlike and
genteel as possible, although the Kadaver story was
perhaps the most atrocious as well as the most suc-
cessful lie in the war. The French authorities were
delighted with it, and an English war correspondent
has related how the French correspondents were made
to send in reports of the corpse factory over their own
signatures.

It will be remembered that in the eventful days before
August 4, 1914, the French Government declared that
they showed their pacific disposition by retiring all
their troops ten kilometres from the frontier—a gesture
which was acclaimed here and in France as magnificent
and magnanimous and heroic. The truth, however,
was that the French desired to delay, as long as possible,
the declaration of war so as to give full time for the
preparations in Great Britain and Russia. This is how
a Frenchman writes of it :

It was evident that if this order were in the least degree to
compromise the success of our plans, our generals would
not have tolerated it. One can say with absolute certainty
that if there were any points where our troops could keep
back ten kilometres from the frontier, it would be at points
where it would not be inconvenient, and in the places where
it would be necessary for them to be nearer they would
be nearer. In fact, there were certain points where they
remained on the frontier, and many, according to M. Messimy
(Minister for War), where they were withdrawn only four or
five kilometres. Moreover, after August 2nd, 5.30 p.m.,
that is, a whole day before Germany’s declaration of war,
the order was suppressed on the pretext that three German
patrols had in the morning made an incursion into our
territory.

M

178 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

Without doubt the ten-kilometre retreat was only a fool’s
trap specially designed to make the English believe that the
French mobilization was a pacific mobilization.

M. Demartial, in “ L’ Evangile du Quai d’Orsay,” 1926.

A good many of the lies circulated in Great Britain
originated from across the channel. The French were
adepts at faked photographs; instances are given
under that heading. The insinuations in their merciless
caricatures also had considerable influence with those to
whom pictures appeal.

Lies in France were, many of them, the same as those
with which we were provided here. But their method
was more extensive and thorough, as is shown by the
disclosures in Behind the Scenes of French Journalism, by
** A French Chief Editor,” from the eighth chapter of
which book the following extracts are taken.

. . . If you reduce the lie to a scientific system, put it
on thick and heavy, with great effort and sufficient finances
scatter it all over the world as the pure truth, you can
deceive whole nations for a long time and drive them to
slaughter for causes in which they have not the slightest
interest. We have seen that sufficiently during the last war,
and will see it in the next one, by which a kind providence
will clumsily try to solve the problem of over-population.

We concluded immediately, and very correctly, that it is
not sufficient to inflame the masses for war, and, in order
to escape the accusation of the war-guilt, to represent the
enemy as a dangerous disturber of the peace and the most
terrible enemy of mankind.

We have not waited for Lord Northcliffe’s procedure. On
the spur of the moment we appreciated the great importance
to enthuse public opinion for our more or less just cause.
As early as three days after the outbreak of the war, Viviani
promulgated a law which on the same day was passed by
the House and the Senate, and which provided as the first
instalment of a powerful propaganda the trifling amount of

FOREIGN LIES 179

twenty-five million francs in gold for the establishment of
La MAISON DE LA PREsSE,

a gigantic building, Francois Street 3, five stories high,
without the basement, where the printing-presses are located,
and the ground-floor with its large meeting hall. A busy,
lively going and coming, as in a beehive; trucks arriving,
elegant autos with pretentious-looking persons. The two
hundred rooms contain the workshops, offices, parlours,
and reception-rooms, where those war-mad heroes are
domiciled whose courage grows with the degree of dis-
tance from the trenches. From the basement up to the
fifth story covered with a glass roof, all is the embodiment
of concentrated propaganda. In the basement stood the
machinery necessary for printing and reproduction, under
the glass roof operated the photo-chemigraphic department.
Its principal work consisted in making photographs and
cuts of wooden figures with cut-off hands, torn-out tongues,
gouged-out eyes, crushed skulls and brains laid bare. The
pictures thus made were sent as unassailable evidence of
German atrocities to all parts of the globe, where they did
not fail to produce the desired effect. In the same rooms
fictitious photographs were made of bombarded French and
Belgian churches, violated graves and monuments and
scenes of ruin and desolation. The staging and painting
of these scenes were done by the best scene-painters of the
Paris Grand Opera. . . . The Press House was the inde-
fatigable geyser which belched forth incessantly false war
reports and fictitious mews from the rear and the front,
the meanest and most brutal slanders of the opponents,
the astonishing fictions of infamous acts attributed to them.
The insidious but efficacious poison thus broadcast has
misled and infected a host of well-meaning but unsophisti-
cated people. . . . During the war the lie became a patriotic
virtue. It was forced upon us by the Government and the
censor, and through the peril of losing the war considered
a necessity ; besides, lying was profitable and often publicly
honoured. It would be useless to deny the success of the
lie, which used the Press as the best means of an extended
and rapid circulation. The greatest efforts were made to
stamp every word of the enemies as a lie and every lie of

180 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

our own as absolute truth. Everything sailed under the
flag of “‘ Propaganda.”

Children’s education was not neglected. In Le
Matin, November 12, 1915, there was a paragraph
headed, ‘‘ To Teachers.”

All French schools must possess a collection of the cards
““German crimes,” in order to impress for ever upon the
children the atrocities of the barbarians. It went on to say
that an artist of note had created a dozen compositions
relating to “the most striking episodes among German
crimes.” . . . “ Teachers, subscribe to-day and place these
pictures in your schools.”

Press distortions were as common in France as in
other countries. As early as July 25, 1914, M. Berthelot,
M. Poincaré’s permanent head of the Foreign Office,
caused a gravely distorted account of the Pacific con-
versations between Bienvenu Martin and Baron Schoen
to be published in the Echo de Paris and Le Matin.
Public opinion can be far more easily dragooned by
Government and Press in France than it can be in this
country. There was, therefore, less need for subtlety,
more chance for concealment, and little fear of the
crudest lies not being accepted, provided they had the
hall-mark of some sort of authority. Moreover, in
France there is less disposition to examine the stories
and statements by which they were deceived and expose
their falsity now that it is all over. Nevertheless, no
people is more intelligently aware of the imbecile
futility of war and its senseless barbarity than the
common people of France.

(c) THe UnrTep STATEs.

There was no richer field for propaganda than the
United States of America in the first years of the war.

FOREIGN LIES 181

The Allied Powers and the Central Powers were both
hard at work competing. The German method began
by being too subtle. A wireless news agency, under
German control, gave at first the best, most authentic,
unbiased, and by far the cheapest war news, and thus
attracted a large number of subscribers and fed the
American Press. As the months passed, their news
began to be ingeniously “slanted” in favour of the
Central Powers. But they relied too much on argu-
ment. The cruder British methods were far more
successful, and intensive work was done by the British
War Mission, which (as Lord Northcliffe stated in The
Times, November 16, 1917) comprised 500 officials with
10,000 assistants. Atrocities, Germany’s sole responsi-
bility, the criminal Kaiser, and all the other fabrications
started in Great Britain, were worked up by American
liars with great effect. The Belgian baby without hands
was a special favourite. There was hardly a household
in which it was not discussed all over that vast continent,
and even so ridiculous a scare as the concrete platforms
for German guns was current in California. Spy
stories abounded and effective films were produced by
those who were pressing for America to come into the
war. One particularly good one dealt with the pacific
spirit which at first prevailed. Instead of deriding it,
the pacifist hero was depicted as a fine, noble figure
standing out against the excited agitation which sur-
rounded him. The incursions of a foreign army were
graphically and dramatically produced. Villages were
burned, women carried off, and various cruelties per-
petrated. The representative of a foreign Power, with
an unmistakably German cast of countenance, was
depicted as a hideous villain plotting and scheming
with evil intent. There was a particularly fine “‘ close-

182 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

up” of him, rolling his eyes with Mephistophelian
cunning, in the gallery of Congress. Finally the pacifist
hero, carried away by his patriotic feelings, succumbs
and supports the war with enthusiasm.

After America entered into the war a number of
“actual war picture” films (prepared at Hollywood)
were released. An immense army of speakers and
pamphleteers were employed by the Committee on
Public Information, and the country was flooded with
literature describing the iniquities of the Hun.

The tragedy of the sinking of the Lxsitania, which
was of course the turning-point, was distorted to the
utmost limit. Atrocity stories and faked films worked
more especially on the feelings of the women, so that
when neutrality was abandoned and “‘ Uncle Sam needs
you ” was substituted, it took very few days to bring
the whole country round. Once America was in the
war, all the propaganda of the Allied nations was used
and further exaggerated.

Among active patriots, John R. Rathom was con-
spicuous with his articles in the Providence Journal and
with his numerous lectures. During 1917 and 1918 he
led the campaign against any who could be suspected
of having German sympathies. His spy stories were
sensational, and he was said to be coached by the British
Secret Service. In February 1918 he was issuing a
series of articles on ‘‘Germany’s Plot Exposed,”
when the New York World discontinued them, as
they were suspicious and believed that the articles
were faked. In 1920 he was charged by Franklin D.
Roosevelt for circulating false and defamatory libels,
and in the course of examination he admitted “ draw-
ing freely on his imagination.” He was finally utterly
discredited, but not till after ‘‘ Rathomania” had

FOREIGN LIES 183

achieved considerable success during the time that it
mattered.

Some lies which were little known here seem to
have circulated successfully and been swallowed down
in America, such as: poisoned sugar-candy dropped by
German aeroplanes for children to eat; the outraging
of nuns in Belgian convents ; theclipping of a chaplain’s
ears by Uhlans ; and the German deification of Hinden-
burg by the hymn “Hindenburg ist unser Gott”
(someone with insufficient knowledge of, or ear for,
German having heard Luther’s hymn “ Ein feste Burg
ist unser Gott”). Persecution of Germans and every-
thing German was undertaken with zeal; Wagner
was unfavourably compared to Sousa, the danger of
sauerkraut was emphasized and people rooted up
“bachelors’ buttons” from their gardens, as being a
German national flower. The frenzy with which the
whole propaganda was conducted in America surpassed
anything we experienced here. America being a land
of extremes, colour and emphasis have to reach an
exceptionally high pitch before anyone takes much
notice.

In October 1918, some of the lies having become too
absurdly preposterous, General Pershing and the War
Department of the United States authorized the publi-
cation of the following cablegram :

A St. Louis (Missouri) paper recently received here states
that a sergeant, one of fifty men sent back in connection
with the Liberty Loan campaign, is making speeches in
which he states: “ The Germans give poisoned candy to
the children to eat and hand-grenades for them to play with.
They show glee at the children’s dying writhings and laugh
aloud when the grenades explode. I saw one American

boy, about seventeen years old, who had been captured by
the Germans, come back to our trenches. He had cotton

184 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

in and about his ears. I asked someone what the cotton
was for.

““* The Germans cut off his ears and sent him back to tell
us they want to fight men,’ was the answer. ‘ They feed
Americans on tuberculosis germs.’ ”’

As there is no foundation whatever in fact for such state-
ments, based on any experience we have had, I recommend
that this sergeant, if the statements quoted above were
made by him, be immediately returned for duty and that the
statements be contradicted.

PERSHING.

The American version of the crucifixion story ! arose
from the following statement of an American soldier :

It was on October 23, 1918, that our detachment, the
Fifth Marines, Second Division, entered Suippes, situated
north of Chalons and west of the Argonnes Forest, the
village having just been evacuated by the Germans. There
we found a naked girl nailed to a barn door. In addition
about half of the coffins in the village churchyard had been
torn from the graves and been opened, apparently with the
idea of despoiling them.

When the soldier was pressed to give more precise
details, he referred to the number of the Pittsburg
Sunday Post of February 2, 1919, in which a description
of the alleged incident, accompanied by drawings—not
photographs—was given.

The matter having been referred to the German State
Archives, it was stated, on September 27, 1924:

During the year 1918 no Germans were in Suippes,
situated on the Suippes and north-east of Chalons. The
German front, especially in October 1918, ran north of
Souain. That village was in possession of the French and
the village of Suippes lies seven kilometres behind to the
south.

1 See page 91.

FOREIGN LIES 185

A Catholic clergyman in Suippes, replying to an
inquiry, dated February 18, 1925, answered :

Your American soldier could not have seen that a young
girl had been crucified, for there is nothing whatever known
here about this tale. That graves have been despoiled is
possible, but not in the cemetery of Suippes.

In spite of the denial of the story by General March
at Washington, it was introduced as the basis of a war
propaganda drama which had the blessing of President
Wilson.

Hideous cruelties, attributed to German submarine
commanders, were also widely circulated. In April
1923 Admiral Sims stated, in the New York Tribune :

There exists no authentic report of cruelties ever having
been committed by the commander or the crew of a German
submarine.

The Press reports about cruelties were only meant for
propaganda purposes.

Traces of the deluge of falsehood still linger to-day
among the more ignorant sections of the population.
But far greater is the resentment of the disillusioned, who
recognize now the quagmire of falsehood from which the
whole war-fever emanated.

Mr. Kirby Page sums up the activities of the Com-
mittee of Public Information :

An examination of all this propaganda reveals the exag-
gerations and misrepresentations to which the American
public was subjected. . . . Every Government systemati-
cally planned to deceive its own people, and a rigid censor-
ship prevailed everywhere.

* Duty to Civilization, by Francis Nielson,

186 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

An interesting volume on the technique of propa-
ganda has recently been published by Professor Lasswell,
of Chicago,! from which the following passage may be
quoted :

So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern
nations, that every war must appear to be a war of defence
against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be
no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate. The war
must not be due to a world system of conducting inter-
national affairs, nor to the stupidity or malevolence of all
governing classes, but to the rapacity of the enemy. Guilt
and guilelessness must be assessed geographically, and all the
guilt must be on the other side of the frontier. If the
propagandist is to mobilize the hate of the people, he must
see to it that everything is circulated which establishes the
sole responsibility of the enemy.

Mr. George Creel was, in the United States, the
equivalent to Lord Northcliffe. His bureau was subsi-
dized by public money, and in the book in which he
relates the amazing activities undertaken, he gives some
idea of the field covered when he says: ‘* The service
cost the taxpayers $4,912,553 and earned $2,825,670.23
to be applied on expenses.” 2

(p) ITALy.

Propaganda in Italy took rather a different form.
The task of the Government was to formulate a policy
which would justify Italy’s entry into the war and give
the people expectation of definite gain. While, there-
fore, certain atrocity stories such as the Belgian baby
without hands were circulated, it was not so much moral
indignation which had to be stirred as political ambition
which had to be satisfied.

* Propaganda Technique in the World War, by Harold D. Lasswell.
* How We Advertised America, by George Creel.

FOREIGN LIES 187

The future of Dalmatia was the chief point of focus.
Round this the Government and the Press worked up a
great campaign of falsehood.

Mazzini once said, “Istria is ours ; necessary to Italy
just as the ports (porti) of Dalmatia are necessary to
Southern Slavs.”

Mazzini’s name counted, and this saying was repro-
duced in Baron Sonino’s paper, the Giornale d’Italia
(March 11, 1918), : “‘ Istria is ours; necessary to Italy
just as the forts (fort/) of Dalmatia are necessary to
Southern Italy.”

When the falsity of this statement was pointed out in
the Chamber, the reply given was that it was “a fault of
the printer.”

Nicolo Tomasso, a patriot of Dalmatian origin, who,
till he died in 1873, was in favour of a Southern Slav
confederation, was also declared, without a vestige of
evidence, to be in favour of the annexation of Dalmatia
by Italy.

An even more ridiculous fabrication was the publica-
tion in a Milanese newspaper of a long letter from no
less a person than Abraham Lincoln, said to have been
written in 1853, in which the American President
assigned to Italy the entire Eastern coast of the Adriatic,
as well as Corsica and Malta. Mazzini, who had been
reduced to tears on reading it, had translated the letter
with his own hand, and Carducci and de Amicis had
expressed their admiration of it. It seemed curious
that such an important document should never have
been heard of before. But unfortunately Abraham
Lincoln, in specifying the various territories which
should be assigned to Italy, used the expressions
“Venezia Tridentina”’ and “ Venezia Giulia,” designa-
tions which were used for the first time in 1866, and

188 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

only came slowly into common use in subsequent
years. The letter was subsequently condemned as a
clumsy forgery.

In 1918 an article appeared in the Rassegna Italiana
in which a large number of famous Italians, from early
Roman times onward, were quoted as being in favour
of Dalmatia becoming an integral part of Italy. A
painstaking research into the writings of every one of
the notables mentioned produced the result that without
a single exception they had all declared themselves in
precisely the opposite sense.

On one occasion an impressive old man with a white
beard was placed outside a meeting called in favour of
the annexation of Dalmatia, who, with tears coursing
down his cheeks, explained how he had been persecuted
by the Dalmatians. As a matter of fact, he came from
Rome.

On October 8, 1916, the Stampa of Turin produced a
declaration from Lugano, said to have been issued by
anti-Italian Yugo-Slavs, to the following effect :

The present war shows that the small States cannot have
an independent life without facing great dangers to their
national existence. Therefore the Yugo-Slavs recognize that
it is impossible to form an independent Serbian kingdom
which embraces all the Yugo-Slav territories. They desire
that the unification of Slav territories should happen in
triune form, namely, that the Slav countries should be
included in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, with the same
rights and duties and in the same situation as Hungary.

The object of this was to incite anti- Yugo-Slav senti-
ment and to further Baron Sonino’s policy of the reten-
tion of Austro-Hungary as a federal State. The docu-
ment was a forgery, but was reproduced throughout

1 Dal Patto di Londra alla Pace di Roma, Gaetano Salvemini.

FOREIGN LIES 189

Italy. L’Unita invited the Stampa to state the source of
its information, but no reply was ever given.!

A series of telegrams was sent from the various
districts of Dalmatia to the Prime Minister asking that
Dalmatia might be annexed to Italy. These were all
sent under the instructions of the Italian military
authorities. The actual orders were subsequently dis-
covered and published, urging that telegrams should be
dispatched “‘ expressing the keen desire of the population
for annexation to Italy.”

Slavophobe opinion was encouraged by every sort of
device. Baron Sonino, for instance, in March 1918,
declared, through his organs, that it was impossible to
come to any accommodation with the Yugo-Slavs with
regard to the Pact of London, because they insisted on
claiming not only Dalmatia but also Pola, Trieste, and
Udine. He had actually received specific assurances
from M. Pashitch that these latter districts should remain
in Italy’s possession.

A good instance of a volte-face on the part of the Press
under Government pressure is afforded by two extracts
from the Popolo d’Italia, which show how the Press was
used to guide public opinion and tell one people to hate
or love another people.

BEFORE ROUMANIAN DECLARATION OF WAR.

People must at last cease from describing the Roumanians
as our sister nation. They are not Romans at all, however
much they adorn themselves with this noble appellation.
They are an intermixture between the barbarous Aborigines,
who were subjugated by the Romans and Slavs, Chazars,
Avars, Tartars, Mongols, Huns, and Turks, and so one can
easily imagine what a gang of rascals has sprung from such
an origin. The Roumanian is to-day still a barbarian and an

* [La Questione dell’ Adriatico, by Maranelli and Salvemini.

190 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

individual of very inferior worth who, amid the universal
ridicule of the French, apes the Parisian. He is glad enough
to fish in muddy waters where none of those perils exist
which he seeks to avoid as much as possible, as he has
already shown in 1913.

The same newspaper wrote after the declaration of
war :

The Roumanians have now proved in the most striking
manner that they are worthy sons of the ancient Romans,
from whom they, like ourselves, are descended. They are
thus our nearest brethren who now, with that courage and
determination which are their special qualities, are taking
part in the fight of the Latin and Slav races against the
German race. . . . Nothing else indeed could be expected
from a people which has the honour of belonging to that
Latin race which once ruled the world.

Before Italian intervention, the Press in Italy was, as
may well be imagined, a mass of contradictory reports
from belligerents on both sides, charges, counter-
charges, atrocity accusations and denials, scares, spy
stories, and every conceivable item of “‘ news” which
percolated through not only from Great Britain, France,
Russia, and the Central Powers, but from the factories
of more lurid and sensational reports in the Balkans.

Utterly unreliable and contradictory reports were
published day by day with regard to the treatment of
Cardinal Mercier. The papal authorities had to deny
the existence of a radio-telegraphic station in the Vatican.
Great excitement was caused by the reported existence
of a secret bomb factory in an international school
directed by Benedictines on the Aventine, which was
proved by police investigation to be without foundation
(Corriére della Sera, May 11, 1915). A Milan evening
paper reported that German spies had been discovered

FOREIGN LIES 19!

and arrested by carabinieri while making maps on the
railroad lines. These were found to be Milanese
citizens testing a camera, and they were released at once.

Statements in the Press reporting that French willing-
ness to treat with Germany had been prevented by
British threats of reprisals (January 1915) had to be
denied by the British and French Embassies in Rome.

A good instance of suppression producing falsehood
can be found in a garbled report of a Parliamentary
question in April 1915.

Mr. Chancellor asked the Under-Secretary for War :

Whether there was any official information showing that
two hundred men belonging to one cavalry regiment became
seriously ill with symptoms of blood-poisoning after inocula-
tion against typhoid ; if so, will he say whether two or three
of them died; whether the two doctors who performed the
inoculation were, on inquiry, found to be Austrians, tried
by court martial and sentenced to penal servitude. .. .

Mr. Tennant replied :

There is no official information corresponding in any way
to the statements in the first three parts of the question.
No one has heard of the Austrian doctors who have been
sentenced to penal servitude.

The question without the categorical official denial of
the story was reproduced as a statement in the Corriére
della Sera, April 18th, the object being, of course, to fan
up anti-Austrian feeling.

Every report of Italy’s possible adherence to one side
was authoritatively denied by the other side, and various
suggested bribes of territory were constantly appearing.
False reports of engagements and preparations in the
Balkans and elsewhere helped to keep the minds of the
unfortunate Italian people in utter confusion.

K * * Ea *

192 FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME

War lies from Russia, the Balkans and other parts of
the world have unfortunately been beyond the reach of
a collector. While some of them may have been more
lurid and fantastic, they would, if recited, hardly serve
by comparison to mitigate the foulness of the streams of
falsehood which found their source in the great civilized
Christian nations of the world.

Is further proof needed that international war is a
monster born of hypocrisy, fed on falsehood, fattened
on humbug, kept alive by superstition, directed to the
death and torture of millions, succeeding in no high
purpose, degrading to humanity, endangering civilization
and bringing forth in its travail a hideous brood of
strife, conflict and war, more war? Yet statesmen still
hesitate to draw the sword of their wits to destroy it.

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